Doll Protest / Mini Protest 1 Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Jan 7 2012

Location: 

Barnaul, Siberia

This demonstration was in response to a new law (as of June, 2012) imposing fines for unauthorized protest of up to $20,000 for organizers and $10,000 for participants. After activists were turned down for a more traditional protest, Lyudmila Alexandrova and others set up small dolls, teddy bears, and figurines with demonstration slogans. Two mini protests took place in January 7 and January 14, 2012.

Lyudmila Alexandrova, one of the protest organizers: “They tried to tell us our event was illegal – they even said that to put toys in the snow, we had to rent it from the city authorities. The authorities’ attempt to limit citizens’ rights to express their position has become absurd. We wanted to hyperbolise this attempt and show the absurdity and farce of officials’ struggle with their own people.”

From The Guardian: Activists set up the display after authorities repeatedly rejected their request to hold a sanctioned demonstration of the kind held in Moscow to protest disputed parliamentary elections results and Vladimir Putin's expected return to the presidency in a March vote.

In response, Andrei Mulintsev, the city’s deputy police chief: “Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests. In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event. Somebody has brought the toys there and therefore expressed his opinion in such a way. People were approaching, looking [at the toys]… There is some kind of publicity in those events, right?”

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Signs read:
“I’m for clean elections”
“A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin”
"Patience is not made of rubber"
"The cow is getting fat because of starving and government because of extra fat"
"We've got elections, but nothing to choose from"

(photos from: http://ivan-krupchik.livejournal.com/11965.html)

Posted by janemklt on

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