Shock-value of meetings induced by illegal statutory

Earlier this month a few young men held a strange, at first glimpse, protest act. They took to hive of activity and ran up posters unfathomable for older generation: «Your like is podcast so and so», «Listen to your voice message», etc. 

It should be noted that critics of these protest acts focused on mutilation of the Russian language rules through the use of foreign words («like», «podcast»…) but ignoring essentials: why did they take to streets with slogans that may concern a narrow group of like-minded fellows or even self-loved? In Russia with its life at the level of outhouse in the yard and the problem of threadbare voice messages? This line of reasoning proved to be chief topic in critical articles of the Moscow press.

While on Sunday, on March 8 in the center of the Azerbaijani capital women hoisted posters which put in claims intolerable in cultural families, something «below the belt»? Have other issues been coped with in Azerbaijan at a time where women lay claims on sexual freedom?

Shock-value is a method to remind of elementary law disturbance

Both in Russia and Azerbaijan they declare the right to freedom of gathering and speech. Article 47 of the Azerbaijani Constitution says that «everyone has the right to freedom of thought and speech». Article 49 adds that: «I. Everyone has the right to freedom of gathering. II. Everyone has the right through informing appropriate state bodies in advance, jointly with other people and armless, to hold meetings, demonstrations, street processions and run pickets».

However, statutory rights as set forth in legislations of Russia and Azerbaijan are infringed, even worse, persecuted, and citizens and public organizations compliant with these constitutional provisions are punished.  Suffice it to recall that 10 activists of the above mentioned March 8 campaign were illegally detained by police and took to Gobustan  – at a distance of 89 km from Baku and releases there in the steppe. In so doing, the Azerbaijani police did not care a jot about protesters’ return home, their personal safety – to think that many of the detainees were women? Leaders of the Azerbaijani police let things go hang. 

If we are not allowed to hold protest acts with political demands, we’ll take to streets with other demands – such is logic of Azerbaijani and Russian citizens hoisting posters with strange demands. Why not if it is not inconsistent with the law?

Suffice it to remember a history of women’s holiday. When in far-off America women took to the streets and rattled empty vessels on March 8, 1857, it was a shock-value but with a serious dimension that led to the struggle for equal gender rights.

On second thought, on March 8, 2020 the Azerbaijani women demanded not release from public fetters but discontinuation of shameful Azerbaijani practice of government regulation of constitutional provisions of the freedom of gathering and speech. Both in Russia and Azerbaijan, people take to streets with epatage and strange posters protesting against illegal prohibitions of holding actions wherever they want.

We are entitled to run campaigns wherever and whenever we want as set forth in the law

It must be borne in mind that the Azerbaijani authorities allocated places for mass actions far from the center of the capital reasoning that a traffic in Baku is congested and that it is inadmissible to prevent citizens and transport facilities from traversing across the city. The above is wrong and unlawful.  Women involved in the March 8, 2020 campaign protested in fact against totalitarian aspirations of the authorities who pretended to know better what and where people are entitled to lay any claims. The mentioned «below the belt» part of woman body is set to draw attention of the authorities to the principle "I have the right to say and demand what I consider necessary unless otherwise prohibited by law ". 

Below-cited are those having right to lay down their demands, such as gays unoppressed; animal lovers unmortified; and women living unto themselves. In case where the people of this sort think it necessary to take to the street, the state undertakes to afford them opportunity to do that. If the police, guided by national importance, closes the prospects to thus warn citizens of the necessity of choosing alternative traffic, they have the right то hold their protest acts where- and whenever they want.

It cannot not emphasized enough that this right is attached in appropriate legislative acts of Europe and America, and in this respect our constitution is not different from the European and American ones. To hold authorized meetings at Lokbatan stadium with its unpopulated seats is none other than a shameful Azerbaijani know-how with which to fight against, and our women showed it off brilliantly yesterday. 

Bully for you!