On January 17, a protest action against the political persecution of the Maidan-2 activists and representatives of patriotic organizations, in particular Tryzub (Trident), that supported the protesting entrepreneurs, took place in Kyiv. According to the demonstration’s organizers, nearly 300 people gathered outside the Presidential Administration building.
At exactly the same time investigators wanted to see the masterminds of the protest. Thus, the leader of the civic movement Spilna Sprava (Common cause) Oleksandr Danyliuk was summoned to the Kyiv Investigation Department under the Head Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on Monday at 9 a.m. The MP Mykhailo Volynets was also summoned for interrogation, albeit at 10 a.m. Both believe the police intentionally scheduled the interrogation at exactly the same time when the demonstration took place, in order to “at least temporarily behead it by interrogating its leaders.”
“This cheap trick only shows us that the regime is afraid of any mass protests,” said Danyliuk on the eve of the demonstration. “This is a self-organized, grassroots protest. People take to the streets with clear and obvious slogans that don’t require translation. The regime has a last chance to stop this police lawlessness.”
As the civic movement leader told The Day, the main objective of this protest action was to show the absurdity of the current persecutions of the “Tax Maidan” activists. “We submitted to the Presidential Administration photographs proving that the damage to the granite pavement on the Maidan was caused by the representatives of the Party of Regions back in 2007. We hope that the pre-sident will react accordingly, and either all the criminal cases concerning the damage to the Maidan will be closed, or they will be opened against the Party of Regions’ representatives as well,” said Danyliuk.
According to Danyliuk, eight cases have now been opened concerning the events that took place on the Maidan. About 20 more cases are open on other pretexts. And over a hundred activists of the “Tax Maidan” are being summoned for interrogation.
Besides, as Danyliuk stated in his interview, the protesters demand that the regime stop ungrounded inspections of small businesses with further withdrawal of their property, worth of millions of hryvnias, without any court rulings. “It is a very serious threat today,” Danyliuk mentioned in his interview to The Day. “Regular raids have taken place in Kyiv already. No other similar cases have been registered so far afterwards. But potentially this is one of the biggest problems for the country’s small business.” However, not all the entrepreneurs who took part in the Maidan-2 are prepared to participate in further “tax” protests, as they consider such actions politically biased. This is why the National Coordinating Council of Entrepreneurs of Ukraine, which, according to its representatives, unites 70 percent of the entrepreneurs of the “Tax Maidan” does not support the protests masterminded by Danyliuk. They say they are against “revolution for the sake of revolution,” because they don’t want to be treated as “cannon fodder.” “We are against any politicians cashing in on entrepreneurs,” Volodymyr Dorosh, one of the representatives of the Coordinating Council of Entrepreneurs, is outraged.
Instead, as he told The Day, the Coordinating Council of Entrepreneurs does not reject the probability of the regime trying to discredit the “Tax Maidan” by labeling it as a political affair and accusing the protesters of being financed by the opposition. “It feels like protest actions these days are playing into the president’s hands by trying to accuse our protest against the Tax Code of being biased and corrupt,” says Dorosh.
Therefore, according to Dorosh, the National Coordinating Council of Entrepreneurs will oppose the persecutions and any violations of rights of those entrepreneurs who participated in the “Tax Maidan” on their own. “If we see that we cannot go on anymore, we will turn to the authorities. So far, there is no need to do so. On the other hand, at this moment we have a load of purely economic matters to settle, like the simplified tax system, the single social contribution, issues concerning contributions to the Pension Fund…” If the regime does not consider the entrepreneurs’ opinion concerning these problems, the National Coordinating Council of Entrepreneurs will, according to Dorosh, organize its own protest action in the late winter, to demonstrate the absurdity of business re-gulations in Ukraine.
