English

Youths wearing costumes of fairytale characters march in Minsk to protest Article 193-1

A dozen young people wearing costumes of fairytale characters on Wednesday marched to the building of the foreign ministry in Minsk where they staged a performance to highlight their concern about the Criminal Code’s Article 193-1 that penalizes acting on behalf of an unregistered organization.

The youths represented unregistered civil society groups.

The demonstration had been organized on the occasion of the 15th session of the UN Human Rights Committee that will begin on September 23, with its agenda featuring a report on Belarus, one of the participants told BelaPAN.

“The foreign ministry has recently made a statement to say that it did not consider it necessary to abolish the Criminal Code’s Article 193-1,” the girl said. “We just want to show the ministry how absurd this article is, and protest against its opinion.”

During the performance, a young man dressed in a costume of a prince read out an edict. “All civil society activists, independent journalists and other fairytale monsters, lend me your ears,” the man read. “I do not even understand that you exist and, therefore, I order you not to gather in a company of more than three or do something together. I order you to move to marshes and live there. As for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I order it to tell the entire world that I am doing so to protect the crowd from difficult thoughts, bad ideas and other manifestations of fairytale extremism.”

Following the performance, the youths delivered an appeal to the ministry, asking it to push for the abolition of the article that was introduced to the Criminal Code shortly before the 2006 presidential elections.