Russia: Free Viktor Filinkov, Igor Shishkin and other arrested Anarchists!

Down with the authoritarian Putin regime in imperialist Russia!

Statement of solidarity by the Marxist Group ‘Class Politics’ (Russia) and the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, 8 May 2018, https://mgkp.github.io/ and www.thecommunists.net

We alert the world public to the increasing repression of the Putin regime against political activists. The 27-year-old Russian anarchist and antifascist Yulij Bojarshinov has been arrested at home on 21 January. Few days later the 23-year-old Viktor Filinkov has been arrested. He was detained, presumably by FSB officers, at the Pulkovo Airport in Petersburg. Since then he has been beaten and tortured with an electroshock weapon. He is accused of being a “member of a terrorist network”.

Few days later the FSB arrested another anarchist, Igor Shishkin. He was also beaten and tortured with electric shocks.

Other examples of such increasing repression in Russia are the arrests of six people in Penza. Five of them (Arman Sagynbaev, Dmitrij Pchelintsev, Ilja Shakursky, Andrej Chernov, Vasilij Kuksov) are currently in pre-trial detention. Again, some of these arrested were brutally tortured.

We protest against these brutal acts of repression and demand the immediate freedom of Viktor Filinkov, Igor Shishkin and other arrested!

While we share, as Marxists, a different ideological outlook, we stand in unconditional solidarity with these activists!

We call the organizations of the international workers movement to solidarize with the victims of the authoritarian Putin regime!