John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Russian police crackdown on protesters was largest in Moscow this decade
“Almost 1,400 people detained during opposition protest”
I do like to have a little perspective in such matters.
Moscow's population is 12.19 million, or just about four times that of Metro Toronto.
In the 2010, G20 street protests in Toronto, more than 1,100 people were arrested, some in quite nasty fashion, as one man who had his artificial leg pulled off violently by a policeman. There were a number of protests and complaints about police brutality.
This article seems to me unnecessarily inflammatory, using as it does, expressions like "some quite brutally," "crackdown on protesters," "largest this decade."
All expressions which tend to zip things up. In fact, most weren't even arrested. They were briefly detained, and, in all, it was proportionately a much smaller event than what we saw in Toronto.
Maybe, a bit of Russophobia creeping in here?
I note it is a Reuters news report, an agency, although it has changed hands, which had quite a reputation during the Cold War as one of the CIA’s outlets for “getting things out there.”
