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Protesters clashed with riot police in the Ukrainian capital today after tough anti-protest legislation, which the political opposition says paves the way for a police state, was rushed through parliament last week.
A group of young masked demonstrators attacked a cordon of police with sticks and tried to overturn a bus blocking their way to the parliament building after opposition politicians called on people to disregard the new legislation.
Despite appeals from opposition leaders not to resort to violence, and a personal intervention from boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko, protesters continued to throw smoke bombs and hurl fireworks and other objects at police.
The police appeared to show restraint during that fracas.
The interior ministry said 20 police were hurt, more than 10 committed for hospital treatment and four in serious condition.
As tensions continued into the night, police used water cannon against demonstrators gathered near the parliament building and the heavily protected government headquarters, eyewitnesses said.
Earlier, some distance away from the clashes, up to 100,000 Ukrainians massed on Kiev’s Independence Square in defiance of the sweeping new laws, which ban rallies and which Washington and other Western capitals have denounced as undemocratic.
The rally, the biggest of the new year, was the latest in a cycle of public protests in the former Soviet republic since president Viktor Yanukovich made a policy U-turn in November away from the European Union towards Russia, Ukraine’s former Soviet overlord.
Several big protests in December attracted hundreds of thousands of people, while thousands maintained a vigil in a Kiev square demanding Yanukovich resign.
Since the new year demonstrations have become smaller, but hundreds of people are still camping in the square and 50,000 turned out a week ago.
The court ban on protests published on January 15th and last Thursday’s legislation aimed at prohibiting all form of public protests, have inflamed tensions again.
The laws - denounced by the United States and other Western governments as anti-democratic - ban any unauthorised installation of tents, stages or use of loud-speakers in public.
Heavy jail sentences were imposed for participation in “mass disorder” and the wearing of face-masks or protective helmets.
Dissemination of “extremist” or libellous information about the country’s leaders was outlawed.
In a gesture of scorn for the helmet ban, many protesters on Sunday wore saucepans and colanders on their heads.
The crisis has highlighted a divide in the country of 46 million people between those, particularly in Russian-speaking eastern areas, who identify more closely with a shared past with Russia and those, especially in the Ukrainian-speaking parts of western and central Ukraine, who look westwards.
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