MILITANTS OF THE RADICAL PARTY, ARA, THE ECONOMIC FREEDOM PARTY AND THE DEMOCRATIC UNION HAVE CARRIED OUT A NON-SANCTIONNED DEMONSTRATION AGAINST THE WAR IN CHECHNYA IN THE RED SQUARE WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF KONSTANTIN BOROVOY, NIKOLAJ KHRAMOV AND VALERIYA NOVODVORSKAYA

Moscow, November 18, 1999 - Today, the first day of the Istanbul OSCE summit, at 2:00 p.m., a non-sanctioned manifestation has been carried out in the Red Square, organised by the Transnational Radical Party, the ARA, the Economic Freedom Party and the Democratic Union.

Twelve demonstrators (ARA Secretary and Russian co-ordinator of the Radical Party Nikolay Khramov, Duma Deputy and President of the Economic Freedom Party Konstantin Borovoy, ARA Treasurer Anna Zaitseva, leader of the Democratic Union Valeriya Novodvorskaya, Democratic Union militants Vadim Tereshchenko and Ljubov' Stolyarova, members of the ARA Secretariat Alyona Asaeva and Sergey Vorontsov, ARA and Radical Party militants Il'ya Malkov, Zinaida Levichek and Susanna Tsaturyan, member of the Economic Freedom Party Maria Karymova) for a quarter of an hour have been standing at the Lobnoe Mesto (historical place of executions) with the slogans "Stop the second Chechen war" in Russian and in English.

Konstantin Borovoy, Valeriya Novodvorskaya and Nikolay Khramov appealed to the journalists and explained their position concerning the activity of the Russian government in Chechnya - completely different form the point of view one may find in nearly all Russian media. They have read aloud and signed a declaration, signed by all the participants in the action in the Red Square - "Not on behalf of us, please!".

Only 10 minutes after the beginning of the demonstration the militia and the Kremlin guards started trying to drive back the journalists from the Red Square - on a plea of the lack of an official authorisation to make photographs and video of the Red Square. As far as the demonstrators are concerned, the authorities did not make any claim.