ID :
76594
Sun, 08/23/2009 - 19:58
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://www.oananews.org//node/76594
The shortlink copeid
Police detain nine people on State Flag Day
.
MOSCOW, August 23 (Itar-Tass) - Moscow police detained nine people in
the city centre on Saturday for violating the rules of holding a public
rally, Anatoly Lastovetsky of the Moscow central internal affairs
department told Itar-Tass.
He said that a group of citizens had been allowed to hold an
authorized rally in support of the State Flag Day marked on August 22.
"The organizers initially announced 50 participants but many more
people turned up in violation of the rules. Besides, some posters unfolded
during the rally didn't refer to the theme of the action," Lastovetsky
explained.
He said that eight participants and the rally organizer were taken to
a police station but were set free soon.
The State Flag Day is a new holiday in Russia. It is designed to pay
respects to the flag by singing the national anthem and attending rallies
and street processions and gala concerts. That is why festivities were
held in Moscow, St. Petersburg and many other cities and places across the
nation - without any serious incidents - on Saturday.
The holiday was introduced under a presidential decree of 1994.
Although it is not on the list of official holidays and days off, the
occasion is marked annually on August 22. It was on that day in 1991 that
for the first time ever the Russian three-color flag was spontaneously
hoisted over the white marble building of the Russian government
overlooking the Moskva River to replace the Soviet Red Flag with the
hammer and sickle.
Although the holiday is rather young, the history of the
white-blue-red tricolor dates back to 1667, when it began to be used as
the identification emblem of Russia's first warship, The Oryol (The
Eagle), built under the rule of Czar Alexei Mikhailovich (1629-1676).
Peter the Great officially approved this symbol. In 1705 he established
the order of stripes, personally drew up its sketch and ordered hoisting
the flag on all Russian ships.
In modern Russia the three-color banner was established as the
official state symbol in August 1991. The law adopted in 2000 ordered
using it only for official purposes and on public holidays.
In the meantime, the Russians' attitude to the state flag has long
ceased to be purely formal, and the state flag law had to be eventually
amended last year. Sports fans were the first ones who caused the
excessively formal attitude to the state flag to melt. Now the people are
allowed to use the flag in any situations to demonstrate the feeling of
patriotism.
The state flag has since been taken to the North Pole, to the bottom
of the Arctic Ocean, to the tallest peaks and remote corners of the world
and even to outer space.
This year on Russia Day, June 12, the state flag was unfolded on the
top of Moscow's Ostankino television tower for the first time since 1991.
According to the latest public opinion poll, the three-colored flag is
one of the most popular symbols of Russia. Nearly one in three (29
percent) citizens says that the flag arouses good feelings and one in two
(52 percent) associate the flag with far more serious emotions, such as
pride and admiration.
.Patriarch Kirill visits Solovki Islands.
MOSCOW, August 23 (Itar-Tass) - The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia
Kirill who visited the Solovki archipelago on Saturday discovered museum
documents proving that his grandfather was kept in punitive confinement on
the Sekirnaya Hill on Solovki's Grand Island during Stalin's purges in the
20th century.
During his visit to the Priory Church of Ascension on Sekirnaya Hill
the head of the Russian the patriarch saw a museum exposition devoted to
the tragic events in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. He
discovered a copy of a document proving that his granddad Vasily Gundyayev
had spent thirty days in punitive confinement on Sekirnaya Hill, the
Moscow Patriarchy press service reported on Saturday.
Gundyayev was sent to a punishment cell for participation in secret
church services which Solovki clergymen conducted in the nearby woods.
"Very few people returned from Sekirnaya Hill but God was merciful to
my grandfather although his punishment was severe. It's a miracle that he
remained alive," Patriarch Kirill said.
A punitive cell notoriously famous as 'Sekirka' was located in the
Priory Church of Ascension in the times of the Solovki Special Purpose
Camp. The inmates were kept without upper clothes in the cold and unheated
church. They slept on the stone floor. Very few Sekirka inmates survived
brutal tortures. Those who were sentenced to death were executed at the
foot of the mountain.
Vasily Gundyayev, Patriarch Kirill's grandfather, was imprisoned and
exiled several times in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s for church activities.
He became a priest in the mid-1950s.
-0-fil/
MOSCOW, August 23 (Itar-Tass) - Moscow police detained nine people in
the city centre on Saturday for violating the rules of holding a public
rally, Anatoly Lastovetsky of the Moscow central internal affairs
department told Itar-Tass.
He said that a group of citizens had been allowed to hold an
authorized rally in support of the State Flag Day marked on August 22.
"The organizers initially announced 50 participants but many more
people turned up in violation of the rules. Besides, some posters unfolded
during the rally didn't refer to the theme of the action," Lastovetsky
explained.
He said that eight participants and the rally organizer were taken to
a police station but were set free soon.
The State Flag Day is a new holiday in Russia. It is designed to pay
respects to the flag by singing the national anthem and attending rallies
and street processions and gala concerts. That is why festivities were
held in Moscow, St. Petersburg and many other cities and places across the
nation - without any serious incidents - on Saturday.
The holiday was introduced under a presidential decree of 1994.
Although it is not on the list of official holidays and days off, the
occasion is marked annually on August 22. It was on that day in 1991 that
for the first time ever the Russian three-color flag was spontaneously
hoisted over the white marble building of the Russian government
overlooking the Moskva River to replace the Soviet Red Flag with the
hammer and sickle.
Although the holiday is rather young, the history of the
white-blue-red tricolor dates back to 1667, when it began to be used as
the identification emblem of Russia's first warship, The Oryol (The
Eagle), built under the rule of Czar Alexei Mikhailovich (1629-1676).
Peter the Great officially approved this symbol. In 1705 he established
the order of stripes, personally drew up its sketch and ordered hoisting
the flag on all Russian ships.
In modern Russia the three-color banner was established as the
official state symbol in August 1991. The law adopted in 2000 ordered
using it only for official purposes and on public holidays.
In the meantime, the Russians' attitude to the state flag has long
ceased to be purely formal, and the state flag law had to be eventually
amended last year. Sports fans were the first ones who caused the
excessively formal attitude to the state flag to melt. Now the people are
allowed to use the flag in any situations to demonstrate the feeling of
patriotism.
The state flag has since been taken to the North Pole, to the bottom
of the Arctic Ocean, to the tallest peaks and remote corners of the world
and even to outer space.
This year on Russia Day, June 12, the state flag was unfolded on the
top of Moscow's Ostankino television tower for the first time since 1991.
According to the latest public opinion poll, the three-colored flag is
one of the most popular symbols of Russia. Nearly one in three (29
percent) citizens says that the flag arouses good feelings and one in two
(52 percent) associate the flag with far more serious emotions, such as
pride and admiration.
.Patriarch Kirill visits Solovki Islands.
MOSCOW, August 23 (Itar-Tass) - The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia
Kirill who visited the Solovki archipelago on Saturday discovered museum
documents proving that his grandfather was kept in punitive confinement on
the Sekirnaya Hill on Solovki's Grand Island during Stalin's purges in the
20th century.
During his visit to the Priory Church of Ascension on Sekirnaya Hill
the head of the Russian the patriarch saw a museum exposition devoted to
the tragic events in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. He
discovered a copy of a document proving that his granddad Vasily Gundyayev
had spent thirty days in punitive confinement on Sekirnaya Hill, the
Moscow Patriarchy press service reported on Saturday.
Gundyayev was sent to a punishment cell for participation in secret
church services which Solovki clergymen conducted in the nearby woods.
"Very few people returned from Sekirnaya Hill but God was merciful to
my grandfather although his punishment was severe. It's a miracle that he
remained alive," Patriarch Kirill said.
A punitive cell notoriously famous as 'Sekirka' was located in the
Priory Church of Ascension in the times of the Solovki Special Purpose
Camp. The inmates were kept without upper clothes in the cold and unheated
church. They slept on the stone floor. Very few Sekirka inmates survived
brutal tortures. Those who were sentenced to death were executed at the
foot of the mountain.
Vasily Gundyayev, Patriarch Kirill's grandfather, was imprisoned and
exiled several times in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s for church activities.
He became a priest in the mid-1950s.
-0-fil/
