Two lezginka dancers arrested in Gelendzhik (+video)

In Gelendzhik, the court arrested for five days two lezginka dancers for petty hooliganism and failure to obey to policemen.

On August 13, a video entitled "Cossacks and police tied a lezginka dancer in Gelendzhik" was published on YouTube. During the detention, a female tourist was poisoned by gas from a can, reported eyewitnesses.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) for the Krasnodar Territory, the dancers were detained after a local woman reported to the police that two citizens "behaved defiantly" in the centre of the city.

"Policemen demanded from two young people to produce their IDs and were refused. The men also refused to go with the policemen for their identification, and therefore they were detained," reported the MIA.

In total, four Circassians were detained, and two of them were released after detention. This was reported by Aurika Akhabekova, a sister of Salim, a 22-year-old detainee.

According to the woman, a police patrol service car drove up to the crowd of dancing Armenians, Russians, Dagestanis, and Kabardins, and policemen aggressively demanded from them to turn off the music and said that the lezginka was banned in the Krasnodar Territory.

The group "Nalchik Times" in the social network "VKontakte" posted a video "An eyewitness about an incident in Gelendzhik". Maria Smirnova, a witness of the incident, called the actions of policemen and Cossacks groundless. According to her, the policemen refused to produce their IDs.

The official ban to dance lezginka in public places is introduced in Rostov-on-Don, Stavropol and Pyatigorsk, the "Rain" (Dozhd) TV Channel reports.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.