MOSCOW, February 5. /TASS/. The Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights is calling on law enforcement bodies to carry out inquiries into all cases of violations of rights of journalists and participants of unsanctioned rallies held on January 23 and 31, the statement by the council published on its website on Friday informs.

"The Council offers to start holding official inquiries of all documented cases of violations of rights of journalists, participants of protest rallies and law enforcement officers, and if there are legal grounds for it, to launch criminal proceedings. According to our information, such inquiries have already been launched on a number of incidents," the statement says.

The document notes that according to the media, during the protests, law enforcement officers detained people who did not take part in them but were in the area by accident.

"There were cases when reporters with identification cards sent on professional assignments were detained. That is, they were hindered from adhering to their lawful professional obligations. There were also arrests of observers from various human rights organizations despite them having the corresponding documents and name tags," the council stated.

Earlier, head of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights Valery Fadeev informed that he had received complaints of arrests of journalists during the unsanctioned rallies. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that on the whole, no one hindered the work of the reporters during the protests, and there were no mass detentions of journalists.

Unsanctioned rallies were held in Moscow and a number of Russian cities on January 23 and 31, and on February 2, people gathered in Moscow after Alexey Navalny’s suspended sentence was replaced for a real one. Only on January 23, nearly 2,000 people were detained in Moscow during the protests.