Invitation to a demonstration on the occasion of the Russian dictator’s birthday (October 7)

The Society for Threatened Peoples is organizing a demonstration on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Russian President Vladimir Putin – in front of the Russian embassy. You are cordially invited:

Friday, October 7, 2022

from 11 am to 12:30 pm

in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin

We will reinterpret Putin’s birthday celebrations to a memorial ceremony for his victims. People dressed in black will demonstrate with black balloons. Further, we will show placards with photos of some of Putin’s many victims.

For more than 20 years, his presidency was and still is characterized by war and violence. He ordered human rights activists and oppositionists in the Russian Federation to be arrested or murdered – in order to silence voices of democracy. His inhumane foreign policy culminated in the attack on Ukraine. The international pressure on his regime must be maintained. Here are a few examples of crimes committed by Putin’s regime during the past decades:

In the night of March 27, 2000, three Russian military personnel intruded the home of the Kungaev family in the village of Tangi-Chu. The men, who were led by Colonel Yuri Budanov, abducted the family’s older daughter Heda Kungajewa, who was 18 years old at that time. She was brought to a military base, where he abused, beat, raped, and killed her. Heda’s fate is typical for the massive violence against civilians during the Chechen war – the bombardments of civilian targets, systematic torture, disappearances, murder, and rape. According to estimates, around 80,000 people got killed during the second Chechen war (1999-2009).

On March 3, 2014, in the course of a demonstration by Crimean Tatars in Simferopol, Reschat Achmetow was abducted by men in uniform. When his body was found, it showed signs of torture and the hands were tied. The population groups of the indigenous Crimean Tatars – which, with around 300,000 members, accounted for around 12 percent of the population – is being terrorized since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Until today, the Crimean Tatars are the most outspoken and undivided group that dares to protest against the Russian invasion of the peninsula. They are suffering from systematic persecution, house searches, arbitrary arrests and long prison sentences, and general criminalization of the Crimean Tatar people.

Oleksandr Kysljuk was shot dead by Russian soldiers in March 2022, near his house in Bucha in Ukraine. His body was found in a mass grave together with the remains of 66 other people. Kysljuk had been a college lecturer for 20 years. He spoke 6 languages, and he published scientific articles and translations. The war against Ukraine is characterized by systematic violence against civilians: bombings of residential areas, hospitals, refugee treks, as well as torture, rape, and arbitrary murder.  

The indigenous shaman Aleksandr Gabyschev from Yakutia has been locked up in a special psychiatric clinic since October 2021 – in remote Ussuriysk in the Primorye region, around 100 kilometers away from Vladivostok – because he dared to criticize Putin’s politics. Gabyschev had demonstrated in public places. In the course of his marches, he held rituals and public discussions – always non-violent and peaceful. He was arrested twice: the second time involving 50 police forces, for the sake of publicity, in October 2021. Since then, he is being held in the clinic against his will, and he is forced to take medication. In contrast to prisons, clinics like this are not subject to specific detention periods. The time periods detainees spend there as “patients” is uncertain – and, as in the case of Gabyschev, they can be extended constantly. Yesterday, it was announced that his forced treatment will be extended indefinitely. In Russia, indigenous peoples only have rights on paper, and they are systematically criminalized. Due to mining of raw materials on their territories, the climate catastrophe, and discrimination, they are threatened in their existence.