Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Pacifista rischia 15 anni di galera in Lettonia

Adesso qualcuno mi spieghi che razza di "liberta'" e' quando un'adolescente
rischia 15 anni di galera per aver colpito qualcuno con un FIORE?
Io una grande differenza fra questi qua' e il KGB non ce la vedo.  
E le accuse di "infermita' mentale" dalla presidente Lettone sembrano usciti
fuori dal breviario Sovietico.
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It was only a slap across the princely cheek with a carnation, but in
ex-Soviet Latvia the assault could mean 15 years in jail for Alina
Lebedeva.  Amelia Gentleman meets the unrepentant anti-war protester.
Amelia Gentleman
The Guardian
Tuesday November 13, 2001
Latvian detention centres are still based on an austere Soviet model.
Twice a day inmates receive two pieces of dry bread and weak tea; at
midday they are handed a portion of soup or thin gruel. There are no
beds in the cells, no mattresses and no pillows; the prisoners sleep
on bare wooden planks. Alina Lebedeva, 16, has already spent three
nights in a windowless remand cell. Theoretically, if the case against
her is pursued, she could face the prospect of a further 5,472 nights
inside. Her crime involves three red carnations (chosen not for their
beauty but for the length and strength of their stalks) and a powerful
desire to express her antipathy to America's bombardment of
Afghanistan.
Last Thursday afternoon, with remarkable precision, she thrust the
flowers through a crowd of flag-waving infants to a point just beyond
the reach of the security guards to where their red petals met the
well-shaven left cheek of Prince Charles with a gentle thwack. With
genuine concern for her target, she had deliberately rejected thorny
roses and the prince was left neither scratched nor bruised, nursing
only a superficial wound to his dignity.
The consequences for Lebedeva could prove more long-lasting. Within
seconds she was whipped out of the crowd by a presidential guard, then
ferried to the department of national security, strip-searched,
cross-examined and provisionally charged under statute number 87 of
the criminal code: threatening the health or life of a foreign
dignitary - an offence which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years.
"If I'd wanted to endanger his life, clearly I wouldn't have hit him
in the face with a bunch of carnations," she explained shortly after
her conditional release on Sunday. "I deliberately chose flowers
rather than rotten eggs or tomatoes because I felt it was a more
humane way of making a statement. More polite. The idea of spending 15
years in jail when you've only been alive 16 years seems harsh. The
very worst I expected was a fine."
Despite Charles's admission that he viewed the attack as "an
unfortunate but trivial incident", the Latvian security police take
the matter extremely seriously and the state prosecutor's office was
yesterday pursuing its investigations. No one expects the full
sentence to be imposed, but until the case is resolved Lebedeva
remains under official surveillance, obliged to report every evening
to the main police station in the industrial town of Daugavpils where
she lives with her parents.
The severity of the charge shocked Latvia, which is not a repressive
country. Some commentators believe that had she not been an
ethnic-Russian - a minority within the state since it became
independent from the Soviet Union - she would have received gentler
treatment. "There are double standards here," Russian journalist Igor
Vatolin said. "I can cite incidents when Latvians have committed
genuine terrorist acts and received minimal sentences, while ethnic
Russians have been handed 10-year sentences for relatively trivial
offences."
Alexander Laivinish, the state lawyer assigned to Lebedeva because of
her underage status, believes the unprecedented charge was rashly
imposed by the national security police. He hopes the case will be
dropped, but remains gloomy about her prospects: "Even if she is
handed a suspended sentence, the case could make life extremely
difficult and hard for her to continue studying or to find a career."
It is unfortunate that in the excitement of the long-planned act
Lebedeva forgot to shout out her message of protest. Had she
remembered, her action would have become the most prominent anti-war
gesture since the campaign in Afghanistan began. Instead, images of
her silent assault were broadcast across the world without
explanation. Her behaviour attracted attention not because of its
political message, but because any assault - no matter how trivial -
on a member of the British royal family is still regarded as headline
news. Some dismayed members of the loyal Latvian media [E il presidente
della Lettona - GT- ] resorted to the
favourite Soviet method of undermining dissent and dismissed her as
mentally unwell.
"I should have said something; I meant to but there wasn't time before
someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me away," she said. "The
idea was to protest against the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan
and Britain's role in the war as America's main ally. They are the
aggressors. It's all very well claiming to be fighting a campaign
against terrorists, but if that's what's happening then terrorists
should be targeted, not the innocent population."
Prince Charles became her target only because Latvia is a provincial
place which doesn't attract many celebrities. "I've got no idea what
his views are on the war. I saw him just as a representative for
Britain." Only as she was pushed into a police car away from the
cameras did Lebedeva manage to shout to a few bystanders that she was
against the "imperialist war in Afghanistan" and was also opposed to
Latvia's attempts to join Nato. She is also, it emerged later, an
active supporter of a minority extremist group the National Bolsheviks
- more anarchist than communist, campaigning for the rights of
Latvia's ethnic-Russian minority, and vehemently opposed to America's
perceived imperialist instincts.
When he visited her in the remand centre, Laivinish begged Lebedeva to
recant her political statements. "Things would have been much easier
if she'd agreed to say she hated Charles for what he did to Diana, or
because she was offended by his baldness. I advised her to write him
an abject letter of apology," he said. "Although she realised the
seriousness of the charge, she refused to back down."
"Why should I apologise?", Lebedeva demanded, calmly sipping strong
tea at a friend's house, still dressed in the dirty jeans and bright
violet jumper she was wearing last Thursday. When she explains her
political convictions she is composed and articulate; it is only when
she sweeps her arms through the air enthusiastically demonstrating
exactly how she thwacked the prince does that trace of ecstatic
teenage defiance become apparent.
Even the miserable experience of three nights in the police remand
centre has done nothing to extinguish her exuberant delight in her
action. She spent most of the time alone in the narrow cell. "If I
balanced on top of the toilet I could see out of a small round hole
just beneath the ceiling, so I could tell whether it was dark or light
outside." She spent the time whispering through the ventilation shaft
to four young men interned next door.
On Sunday, Lebedeva was unable to suppress a gleeful smile as she
walked out of the cells, but her mother, Larissa, was furious and
distraught. Police had refused to reveal the time of the release, so
she had to wait three hours on the street in a hailstorm. She had
spent three days pleading on her daughter's behalf.
An old family friend, an English schoolteacher, managed to apologise
on Lebedeva's behalf to the prince on the second day of his trip, and
passed a letter pleading for sympathy to his guards. "He didn't reply,
but he listened. I hope that helped. Alina needs to grow up a bit.
This could ruin her life and she doesn't realise it," she said.
Lebedeva's political convictions grew out of evenings spent hanging
out in the city park of her home town Daugavpils - an impoverished
industrial city, ruined by the recent closure of its key factories.
Unemployment has soared and residents say a sense of depression is
tangible. Here she met a small cell of National Bolshevik activists,
and began helping them with their demonstrations, wearing a T-shirt
with a hammer and sickle, laying flowers in the town square where a
monument to Lenin once stood before it was removed by the post-Soviet
Latvian government.
The movement is tiny (its leader Vladimir Linderman admits there are
only 50-odd active supporters throughout Latvia) but has passive
support among many ethnic Russians, who feel discriminated against in
a country which is gradually banning the Russian langage from all
official use and closing down Russian-language schools and
universities.
Lebedeva said she planned the protest herself, without the involvement
of National Bolshevik friends. Her lawyer believes this should help
her, because the Latvian authorities have a powerful distaste for the
movement. "Nobody told me to do it; it was my idea. I left home the
day before and came here alone. I slept by myself in a doorway the
night before," she said.
Before he set off for his five-day tour of the ex-Soviet Baltics, the
prince had spoken touchingly about his desire to meet a selection of
the region's organic farmers and to talk to young people "about their
vision for their countries". In Riga's central square he paused to
talk to children proffering flowers.
Lebedeva says she didn't think she would be able to carry out her
plan: "I was amazed by how many police there were. But he walked
straight towards me. I was incredibly lucky. He looked surprised and
confused when I hit him, but there was no pain on his face. Carnations
are soft. I only wanted to make a statement." Some of the policemen
laughed when they heard what she had done. "They said 'Good girl!'.
Then I was handed over to the national security police who weren't so
nice. They kept asking me if I had relatives in Afghanistan. No one
seemed to understand that I was just against the war."
She insists she is undismayed by the on-going criminal proceedings and
is confident that she will not be jailed. "I don't regret anything.
I'd do it again."
 Guardian Unlimited Š Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

 support among many ethnic Russians,
Mi pare che anche il giornalista debba fare una visitina dallo psichiatra :-DDDDDDDDDDD

Ah se è un pacifista come quelli di Genova possono pure sparargli....