IT HAD seemed like a relationship destined to be long and even meaningful, but now it appears to have gone wrong very quickly.
Against a balmy Black Sea backdrop, U2’s frontman Bono and Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev had swapped views on poverty, ecology and music on Tuesday. Bono even made fun of Mr Medvedev’s devotion to Deep Purple. “I come here to cross the great divide between me, a Led Zeppelin fan and you, the Deep Purple fan,” Bono joked, strolling next to Russia’s leader at his summer residence. A day later, U2’s first concert in Russia ended in political controversy.
The Moscow authorities took a dim view when activists from Amnesty International and Greenpeace put up tents at the venue and invited fans to sign petitions. Officials detained five Amnesty volunteers hours before the show and ordered others to remove Amnesty T-shirts and tear down their headquarters.
“We were collecting signatures to support prisoners of conscience and to call on the authorities to investigate the murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Natasha Estemirova,” Sergei Nikitin, director of Amnesty International Russia, said yesterday.
“We’d been doing this for about three hours. At 5pm, the riot police turned up. They told us we were holding an unlicensed picket, and took away all our placards. We were also strongly recommended to strip off our T-shirts.”
The Kremlin’s heavy-handed tactics provoked outrage from Moscow’s liberals, who said this was the first time a country had prevented U2’s partner organisations from taking part in a concert.
The activists had been due to join Bono, an Amnesty supporter, on stage during Walk On, dedicated to the jailed Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi.
Russia’s rock critic Artemy Troitsky told Moscow radio station Echo Moskvi: “These organisations take part in every concert in every city in the world. They are an organic part of the U2 tour . . . Unfortunately our law enforcement agencies have a kind of allergy or sickness . . . towards human rights.” The five activists were released after two-and-a-half hours without charges, Mr Nikitin confirmed.
Bono made no mention of the incident. Before a 50,000-strong crowd he thanked Mr Medvedev for the "gracious" reception he had received. (
Guardianservice)