On August 9 participants of the environmental
camp destroyed one of the dams used for poach fishing by national park
authorities. At 2.30 p.m. 15 people, activists from "Rainbow Keepers",
environmental club "Alternative" and "Civil Initiative" went to Selskaya
(Melnichnaya) dam, and started to level it with spades. They were filmed
by three tourists passing by, who burned some firecrackers. Later on a
man, hired by Filatenko to look after the dam appeared, but as he was afraid
to approach us, he didn`t take any actions to prevent the destruction of
the dam. We successfully destroyed the dam and returned to the camp.
Next morning, on August 10, a police
car stopped by the camp. Solovykh and "anybody else" were offered to drive
with them to the police station "to testify on the fact of the blowing
up of the dam". Cops didn`t go into the camp because, as they said, they
didn`t want to meet any journalists. A. Solovykh and A. Zgeglov from "Alternative"
went with the police and were set free in couple of hours. Few hours later,
after Solovykh and Zgeglov had left police came again. Without any explanation
and not showing their documents they tried to get information about the
camp, about us and our aims, and about the action we had a day before.
When they understood that we were not going to testify about anything,
they brought two witnesses from the neighboring tourist base to prove that
we refused to sign all the papers. Police officers threatened us with different
punishments, they promised to imprison us, and to put on trial for criminal
offences. One cop asked everybody weather they were registered in psychiatric
clinics or in the clinics for drug addicts. When we answered "no", they
said: "What a pity!"
Meanwhile, the reason for all this crap turn
out to be pretty stupid. On August 9 at night “the watcher” from the dam
informed Filatenko and local police that ecologists were at the dam that
day, and that he heard explosions and later saw that the dam was destroyed.
Local police didn`t bother to double check and turned to the higher departments
right away. Next morning people for the special group for prevention of
the organized crime with specially trained dogs, from regional police department,
and from regional and district departments of internal affairs arrived.
Together with Solovykh and Zgeglov they all went to the dam to examine
it, but didn`t find any signs of explosions and made sure that it was digged
with spades. So, local police once again showed themselves as complete
fools.
On the next day, we went to Orekhovskaya
dam to destroy the lock on the pipe, but we were stopped by Filatenko,
a park ranger, and several angry looking guys. They forced us to go back
to the camp and promised to come at night and beat the hell out of us.
They specially threatened one of our guys. When we get back to the camp
we found out that during our absence somebody attempted to set on fire
our tents, but fortunately, those who remained in the camp noticed the
fire and stopped it. We informed local police about the threats we got
and about the fire, but there was no reaction on their side.
Press-service of "Duplo"
Committee on rescuing of
Samarskaya Luka,
ph. (8462)
30-13-61
e-mail: duplork@mail.ru
& faber@ssu.samara.ru