MOSCOW, July 9 — Russian police today detained seven Crimean Tatars on Red Square as they held up posters protesting against the persecution of the Muslim ethnic group on the peninsula, Russian television reported.

The indigenous community has largely opposed Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, and the protest comes on the eve of a Supreme Court hearing for four Crimean Tatars convicted of plotting an uprising.

A group of around 18 men stood in line on the cobbled square holding posters, TV Rain independent channel reported from the scene.

The posters carried photographs of prisoners and slogans such as "End repressions” and "Our children are not terrorists”.

Police approached the activists around two minutes after the protest began and ordered them to roll up posters, video posted by Grani.ru news website showed. Some then walked away.

Those detained were taken to a police station in central Moscow, activists said. A Moscow police spokesman said he did not have any information on the detentions.

The new Russian authorities in Crimea have cracked down on the media and national assembly, imprisoning dozens of activists on extremism charges.

The protest came a day before Russia’s Supreme Court is due to hold an appeal hearing over the sentencing in December of four Crimean Tatars to up to 17 years in prison for belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir and plotting a violent uprising.

A lawyer representing Crimean Tatars, Emil Kurbedinov, told AFP the men "came out to picket on Red Square against repressions that have gone on 5 years now against Crimean Tatars, against arrests and lengthy prison terms for peaceful people that Russia has labelled terrorists.”

One of those detained was the father of an imprisoned activist accused of membership of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, Kurbedinov added. The group wants to establish a pan-Islamic state and is banned in Russia.

The protest was the largest in Moscow in recent years by Crimean Tatars, said the lawyer. — AFP