"The Russian people have started to open their eyes to what's happening in this country," said Andrei Ivanov, a 30-year-old manager who joined about 200 people at a rally in Moscow. "The current regime is not acting on behalf of the welfare of the people, but against the welfare of the people."
The government announced the tariffs on imported automobiles earlier this month to bolster flagging domestic car production and try to head off layoffs or labor unrest among the country's more than 1.5 million car industry workers.
Protests against the tariffs, which are scheduled to go into effect next month, have been most vehement in Russia's largest Pacific port "" Vladivostok.
Strikers rallied in the city Saturday for the second weekend in a row, and demonstrators hoped to rally again Sunday. But authorities refused to authorize the demonstration and hundreds of riot police blocked off the city square where it was planned.
Soon after, several hundred people gathered on Vladivostok's main square--not the planned site of the demonstration. Waiting riot police ordered them to disperse, saying the gathering was illegal. The group refused and began singing and dancing around a traditional Russian New Year's tree on the square.
An Associated Press reporter saw police beat several people with truncheons, throw them to the ground and kick them. Several parents were detained as their children watched.
Vladimir Litvinov, who heads a local rights group, said police behaved "like thugs" and had no right to break up the gathering.
"We support a civilized resolution to all the problems but when they send Moscow riot police to break up a gathering in our city, and they start breaking arms and legs and heads...," he told AP. "People are very, very angry. It's hard to predict what might happen now."
Regional police officials said they were forbidden from saying how many people had been arrested.
Protests over the car tariffs, which take effect next month, were held in more than a dozen cities, with motorists driving in long columns with flags waving. National TV channels, which are state-controlled, ignored the demonstrations.
UTAH STUDENT DISRUPTS GOVERNMENT AUCTION NOW FACES FEDERAL PRISON
University of Utah student Tim DeChristopher explains how he "bought"- 22,000 acres of land in an attempt to save the property from drilling. The sale had been strongly opposed by many environmental groups. Stephen Bloch of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said, "This is the fire sale, the Bush administration's last great gift to the oil and gas industry."-
The Bureau of Land Management held a controversial auction Friday to sell oil and gas drilling rights to nearly 150,000 acres of wilderness in southern Utah.
A coalition of environmental groups opposed to energy development on public lands filed a lawsuit last week to block the auction. The Bureau of Land Management allowed the auction to proceed even though a federal judge won't hear the case for another thirty days.
Actor Robert Redford has been among those speaking out against the sale of these lands.
Tim DeChristopher is a University of Utah economics student. We will follow his case. He goes to court later today. He disrupted Friday’s auction of Utah’s pristine wilderness to oil and gas companies by buying up some of the land himself.
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