3  09-02-87 03:38 aed

 Moscow authorities ban street demonstrations
 By GERALD NADLER
   MOSCOW (UPI) _ Moscow city authorities have banned demonstrations
in the heart of the capital in the wake of a series of street protests
that grew out of Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of "glasnost," or
openness.
   Moscow Deputy Mayor Anatoly Kostenko told the Vechernaya Moskva
newspaper Tuesday that ban was included in new temporary rules for
organizing and holding assemblies, meetings, processions and
demonstrations in the capital.
   "The executive committee of the Mosocw Soviet has ruled out the
holding of mass participation activities in Red Square and areas
adjoining the Moscow Kremlin and also in a number of other squares in
the center of the city," the Tass news agency said, citing Kostenko's
report.
   Kostenko explained that the measure putting a halt to the
demonstrations was meant to keep the city's most heavily frequented and
visited areas open to Muscovites and guests in the capital.
   The ban came five weeks after some 500 Crimean Tatars staged an
overnight sit-in at the edge of Red Square July 25-26, forcing the
historic area to be closed while the Tatars held placards demanding they
be returned to their homeland.
   Late dictator Josef Stalin deported the Crimean Tatars in 1944 from
their Black Sea homeland to Central Asia, charging they collaborated
with the occupying German army in the war.
   Last winter, Jewish refuseniks held a street demonstration in
Moscow demanding the right to emigrate and freedom for Soviet refusenik
prisoner Josef Begun, who has since been released.
   On Saturday, some 100 members of the Hari Krishna sect from 13
Soviet cities gathered in Moscow to demand rights, but were dispersed
after about five minutes, a spokesman for the group reported Sunday.
   Although the July demonstration by the Crimean Tatars was allowed
to proceed unmolested, letters of indignation began appearing in the
Soviet press about the inconvenience caused to citizens and guests in
the capital.
   Moscow Mayor Boris Yeltsin, a supporter of Gorbachev's reformist
policies, made note of the letters during an interview with the Izvestia
newspaper but defended the new policies.
   The Crimean Tatar demonstration, in which participants came to the
capital from Central Asia, erupted after a Soviet statement promised
that a government commission headed by Soviet President Andrei Gromyko
would look into their demands.
   Despite official urgings to the Crimean Tatars to present their
case quietly, they staged the sit-in, demanding that they see Gorbachev.
The group dispersed only after they won an audience with Gromyko.
   After the audience with Gromyko, Crimean Tatar spokesmen expressed
dissatisfaction, vowed to continue their struggle and assembled in a
Moscow park. The protests finally ended when authorities put the leaders
on planes back to Central Asia. The other Tatars left the capital soon
after.