Russian Toys Protest Political Corruption: Siberian Nano-Protest

by NowPublic Staff | January 27, 2012 at 11:07 am

111 views | 0 Recommendations | add comment

Police Seek Organizers of Siberia Toy Protest

The Russian government has deployed police forces to crack down on "unauthorized protests" against Kremlin corruption. However, demonstrators in Siberia found an end-run around the ban: toys.

Siberia Toy Protest: Ivan Krupchik Photos

Lego minifigs, Kinder Surprise toys, Transformers*, stuffed animals, and action figures have been popping up in the Siberian city of Barnaul, holding tiny banners protesting the results of the December 2011 Parliamentary elections, widely believed to have been rigged.

Police, still somewhat unsure of how to actually prosecute the toymaster (or typmasters), are trying to track down the mastermind behind the nano-demonstrations.

There have been two nano-demonstrations so far, on January 7 and January 14.

“While the authorities restrict our constitutional rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, the rights of toys have so far been untouched,” one of the protest organizers, 30-year-old IT specialist Andrei Teslenko, wrote in a post on Russia’s most popular social network Vkontakte.

"The authorities' attempt to limit citizens' rights to express their position has become absurd," said Lyudmila Alexandrova, a 26-year-old graduate student and protest organiser. "We wanted to hyperbolise this attempt and show the absurdity and farce of officials' struggle with their own people."

(*Reports are unclear if the Transformers consist of Autobots, Decepticons, or both.)