:: Russia - Picketing free speech

The pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi is back in the headlines with its lawsuits against four European newspapers over its picketing of Alexander Podrabinek, a human rights activist who the group claims published an attack on the reputation of Soviet war veterans last month.

These lawsuits came two weeks after Nashi lawsuits against four Russian media organisations over the same issue. What's making the red anoraks so touchy?

Nashi is seeking 500,000 roubles ($17,000) in damages from France's Le Monde and Le Journal du Dimanche, Germany's Frankfurter Rundshau, and Britain's The Independent for "insults to [Nashi's] dignity and honour".

The Independent is being sued for comparing Nashi to the Hitler Youth, and Le Journal du Dimanche for describing Nashi's campaign as "a fierce blend of patriotism and xenophobia".

Frankfurter Rundshau apparently caused offence by reporting that the "Putinist youth organisation Nashi regularly calls Podrabinek and his family with threats and is constantly on duty at his home."

The cases all originate with Nashi's reaction to Podrabinek's Sept. 21 article: "As an Anti-Soviet to other Anti-Soviets."

The trouble can be traced back to the renaming of the Anti-Sovietskaya kebab restaurant in northern Moscow, which was named (at least in part) because it stands opposite the Sovietskaya hotel. After a veterans' group complained to the local authorities that the name was offensive to those who fought in the Red Army, the restaurant was forced to change its name to Sovietskaya.

Podrabinek, a Soviet-era dissident who spent several years in labour camps in the 1970s and early 1980s, denounced the decision in Yezhednevny Zhurnal. But many saw the article, which equated veterans with NKVD units and labour camp guards, as a scandalous attack on the veterans.

Nashi organised a daily picket outside the writer's house, demanding that he apologise for what it called "the low, unconscionable act" of "slandering the great pages of our nation's history".

Nashi has a long record of staging protests, defending Russia's record in World War II and being criticised in the Western press. In 2007 activists staged a similar picketing of the Estonian embassy over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn.

Suing the four Western newspapers seems to be a continuation of a decision to defend Nashi's reputation.

On Oct. 8, Nashi filed a lawsuit against REN TV, Novaya Gazeta and Polit.ru, all over their coverage of the Podrabinek pickets.

Nashi's lawyer Sergei Zhorin told Kommersant that Nashi was seeking damages from REN TV for describing Podrabinek as "persecuted", and from Novaya Gazeta for saying that several Nashi activists had broken the law in its pickets. Ekho Moskvy radio is being sued over similar coverage.

Podrabinek's article contains some pretty blunt language ("You are Soviet veterans, and thank God your country ceased to exist 18 years ago," is just one choice sentence), and even those sympathetic to Podrabinek's feelings criticised him for failing to distinguish between Stalin's government and ordinary soldiers. And writing in his blog, Podrabinek himself said that he did not consider Nashi a threat (though he did imply that he had gone into hiding because of more "serious people" backing the group).

Nonetheless, Nashi's tactics provoked a debate about freedom of speech and drew criticism from the media and some officials.

Ella Pamfilova, the Kremlin's top human rights official, condemned the "persecution" of Podrabinek, and described Nashi as "irresponsible adventurists". Later, after United Russia and the ultranationalist Liberal Democrats called for her resignation, she condemned some of Podrabinek's statements. But she didn't apologise and said she would refer the case to prosecutors.

Nashi blamed the group's opponents for getting the courts involved, but abandoned its daily pickets of Podrabinek's house in favour of an annual picket.

The Western newspapers' Moscow correspondents declined to comment, but a spokesman for The Independent, Paul Durnan, said that the paper had not yet received any formal notice of Nashi's lawsuit.

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