Russia march organisers complain of police pressure

MOSCOW, May 11 (Reuters) Anti-Kremlin protesters say police are intimidating them ahead of a demonstration originally planned to coincide with a summit between Russia and the European Union next week.

The protesters in the southern Russian city of Samara, where the summit is due on May 18, say police have questioned and detained some of them over the past week.

''It's clear what the purpose of this is: to stop by any means the march in Samara and to try and lock up all of its organisers or anyone who has anything to do with this march,'' one of the organisers, Mikhail Gangan, told Reuters today, speaking by telephone from Samara.

Gangan has previously been detained by police as a member of the now banned National Bolshevik party -- a nationalist, left-wing group. The group's banner was reminiscent of the Nazi flag: red with a white circle in the middle but emblazoned with a black hammer and sickle rather than the swastika.

Samara's authorities have banned ''the March of the Dissenters'', saying it would block a central road, another protester Valery Pavlyukevich said.

Pavlyukevich, from the United Civil Front led by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, said the organisers still hoped to hold the rally and the earliest date would be May 21.

Samara region police said on their Web site on Wednesday that they had detained eight people for distributing leaflets.

The leaflets, some of them promoting the march, stirred up racial or ethnic hatred or contravened the correct procedure for public assembly, police said.

Police spokesman Igor Kornyev said some had carried inflammatory statements and Third Reich symbols, such as an eagle and a cross.

Pavlyukevich said police had targeted mainly people associated with the National Bolsheviks.

''They are simply exploiting the fact that this party is banned,'' he said. ''Of course, the goal of these actions is intimidation.'' Gangan said two Russian journalists interviewed him yesterday.

Police then detained them, saying they did not have proper identification papers, and questioned them about the march, he said.

Police raided the office of the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper in Samara and confiscated two computers, the paper's editor-in-chief told Interfax news agency on Friday. He added the raid was linked to the planned Samara demonstration.

REUTERS SYU KP2046