A small spark, the prison sentence of an activist who rejected the construction of a mine in the republic of Bashkortostan, about 1,300 kilometers east of Moscow, next to the Ural Mountains, has provoked the first relatively massive protest in Russia since the mobilization military in autumn 2022. Some 2,000 citizens have taken the center of the capital of that region, Ufa, who join the thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets in the last three days and have challenged the large police force deployed by the authorities. Dozens of people have been arrested, according to independent Russian media.
The protests began on January 17, when a well-known defender of the Bashkir ethnic group, Fail Alsinov, was sentenced to four years in prison under the excuse of having insulted immigrants. The activist had opposed the construction of a mine in a sacred place in his town, Mount Kushtau, in recent years, and after the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 he had been arrested on several occasions for his public opposition to the war.
Bashkortostan is a region rich in gold, coal and other mining resources. During one of the rallies that he gave in 2023, Alsinov denounced that his wealth is exploited by companies domiciled outside his province while his ethnic group gradually disappears impoverished. “What benefit do we get from this? Our boys are leaving; They bow their heads and die. The men who can defend our lands do not stay. Only the women and the elderly remain. Alcoholics die drunk, the living die in war [contra Ucrania]”, denounced Alsinov, whose organization was declared extremist by the authorities.
The Russian Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor’s Office that reports directly to the presidency, opened a criminal case against him in August 2023, charging him with the crime of inciting hatred against immigrants. The activist had delivered his rally in the Bashkir language and the Russian translation alleged that he had spoken in a pejorative manner about workers arriving from other regions of Russia and the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia. “Armenians will return to their homeland, Kara Jalik [un término túrquico despectivo equivalente a ‘gente mafiosa’]”, included the documentation presented by the prosecution. However, his defense alleges that it was poorly translated into Russian and referred to them as “poor people.”
The trial was held in the mining town of Baymak. On the same day that the judges handed down the sentence, a large crowd gathered in front of the court, between 5,000 and 10,000 people, the independent newspaper reports. Viorstka. “Men, women, old people and children” who shouted “shame!” when one of Alsinov’s supporters announced the verdict with a megaphone, according to the newspaper. “Thank you very much for supporting me, I will never forget it. “I am not guilty,” the activist told the media. RusNews.
In Baymak there have been temperatures below -15 degrees this week. Clad in their coats, some of the protesters that day clashed with the police, throwing snowballs while huge lines of officers tried to disperse the crowd. Although WhatsApp and Telegram began to function poorly in the region at that time, videos of the first protests in Russia in more than a year spread quickly on the internet.
The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case for “massive riots” in the city and warned that it will identify and prosecute the participants in the protests, whose sentence could reach 15 years in prison under that article of the penal code. However, the measure has not deterred residents of the region and they have continued to take to the streets of Baymak and the regional capital in the days following Alsinov’s trial.
Ban on demonstration
Demonstrations are prohibited in fact In Russia, even an individual picket with a blank sheet of paper can lead to arrest. This is why the Bashkirs played cat and mouse with the police this Friday. More than 2,000 people took over Salavat Yulayev Square in Ufa, but it was not a common demonstration: instead of forming a single block and shouting their complaints, they danced in circles singing songs in Bashkir or moved aimlessly under the pretext that They wanted to visit the monument to Yúlavev – a Bashkir independence hero of the 18th century – according to a local journalist from the SOTA channel. However, the police have arrested several people.
A Russian platform that investigates political persecution in the country, OVD-Info, estimates that 19,747 people have been arrested during protests since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, to which 865 criminal cases are added. against opponents of the war, many of them punished with long prison terms or severe fines. The Kremlin managed to quell the complaints in the streets through an enormous police deployment and the tightening of the laws that contemplate imprisonment for criticizing the actions of the army and its high command, both for those who defend peace and for the ultranationalists who complain about the conduct of the war.
Since the offensive on Ukraine began, there have only been two major waves of protests. The first, at the beginning of the invasion; and the second, after President Vladimir Putin decreed a massive mobilization in September 2022, especially in regions such as Bashkortostan and Dagestan, because the enlistment was harsh on ethnic minorities. The arrest and sending of its participants to recruitment centers quickly drowned out those protests, although in recent weeks there has been another attempt at a demonstration after dozens of women of those mobilized demanded their return home.
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