“Saddled up a wide range of rhetoric”: COVID dissidents staged a rally in Vladikavkaz

An application for the rally was submitted more than a month ago to the city administration of Vladikavkaz. The authorities did not coordinate the action and proposed to postpone it to a later date - "until the epidemiological situation improves." But the rally organizer, former opera singer Vadim Cheldiev, continued to urge people to come, his emotional appeal can be found on the Internet.

“On the 20th of November there will be a nationwide gathering of people who are tired of enduring all this lawlessness ... Today, under the pretext of a coronavirus that does not exist, people have been driven into slavery, they are taking away the latter, trying to establish control over us all ... I urge everyone to go to acts of disobedience in order to return everything to the legal field of the USSR, ”said Vadim Cheldiev.

The organizer of the rally, in addition to disbelief in the coronavirus, is also known for calls to restore the Soviet Union. Cheldiev is engaged in social activities, helps the poor, fights against enterprises that pollute the environment. In parallel, he seeks the resignation of the government of North Ossetia-Alania, demands the return of Soviet power and convinces Internet users that the coronavirus is a fraud conceived by the authorities.

Invented virus and 5G radiation

The rally began around noon. The police arrested Cheldiev himself in St. Petersburg on April 17 for "publicly disseminating knowingly false information about circumstances posing a threat to the life and safety of citizens." During the transfer, the man was reportedly attacked by a policeman, so now he remains in the detention center.

“The funny thing is that the rally participants had no common requirements for all. Someone insisted on the release of Cheldiev, someone demanded the abolition of self-isolation. There were also those who protested against the postponement of the end date of World War II (September 3, to which the date is planned to be postponed, is Remembrance Day for victims of the terrorist attack in Beslan. - RT ). There were a lot of aggressive youth in the crowd. Some came to Freedom Square drunk, ”a resident of Vladikavkaz, journalist Zaur Farniev told RT.

The head of the republic Vyacheslav Bitarov came out to the meeting. He told protesters that there is only one remedy for coronavirus - “stay at home.”

“If someone proves to me that there is no coronavirus, I will open everything again,” Bitarov suggested.

The constructive dialogue between the head of the region and the protesters did not work. Bitarov was booed, after which he returned to the administration building.

According to RT, Alan Salbiev, the head of the North Ossetia-Alania Information Technology and Communications Department, “the situation was taken advantage of, as is often the case in crisis situations, with demagogues who have become“ caliphs for an hour ”for bewildered people.

“They instantly straddled the rhetoric of a wide range - from the“ world conspiracy with a fictitious coronavirus ”to“ 5G antennas that emit radiation and diseases, ”said Salbiev.

According to the official, in the suburbs of Vladikavkaz, unidentified persons burned down the base station of mobile communication the night before. The lack of 5G infrastructure in the region, according to Salbiev, emphasizes the "delirious nature of such reasoning."

According to the official’s impressions, the protesters were aggressive towards the doctors and made "attempts to break into the infectious ward of the republican hospital and prove that there were no patients there."

The "gray zone" of the economy

The police did not take any action for a long time. According to eyewitnesses, even when unknown people around three o'clock in the afternoon began to throw stones at the riot police, law enforcement authorities did not carry out mass detentions, limiting themselves to calls to disperse.

“By six in the evening there were few people left in the square. These were the most aggressive and uncontrollable participants in the rally. When the persuasion didn’t work and the citizens refused to disperse, the police detained the last protesters, ”said local journalist Zaur Farniev.

Some activists were detained at the very beginning of the rally. For example, a resident of Vladikavkaz Indira Gabolaeva. She told RT that "law enforcement officers were polite, but persistent."

“Without the use of force, they put me in a patrol car and took me to the department where I spent several hours. I was able to return to Freedom Square by the end of the rally. I believe that the authorities unnecessarily scare us with the coronavirus. It’s not a disease that is dangerous, but a ruined healthcare system. I wanted to speak and talk about the economic problems of the region. It seems to me that the authorities do not support people enough, ”said RT Gabolaeva.

The republic’s police have not yet provided data on the total number of detainees. Now, after the rally, the authorities are afraid of an outbreak of the disease.

"This is dangerous. They all stand in a crowd, all without masks, most likely a bunch of infected people. They don’t believe in anything. As a doctor, I will say: the situation is catastrophic. Naturally, everyone who is here needs to be isolated. But this will not be possible, ”Alan Tibilov, the head of the republican department of Rospotrebnadzor, told reporters during a protest rally.

Meanwhile, a new outbreak of coronavirus in North Ossetia-Alania and the extension of the isolation regime will further complicate the lives of local entrepreneurs.

“As long as medium-sized businesses hold on, reserves have not been exhausted. Small business also somehow survives, but the margin of safety of the economy is almost at an end. It is necessary that in May at least small retail stores open. This will give the business some hope, although the previous business activity will not return soon - after all, most of the buyers are still sitting at home. People are tired, they are under a lot of psychological pressure, ”said Timur Medoev, Alania Commissioner for the Protection of Entrepreneurs' Rights in the Republic of North Ossetia.

“Self-isolation particularly hit the people who were employed in the so-called“ gray ”zone of the economy,” explains Alan Salbiev. - People were not drawn up anywhere, did not pay taxes, received their money in an envelope. This mainly relates to services and trade. People were suddenly left without work, and due to the illegality of their labor relations, it seemed to them that they were the last in line for state support. Of course, this is not so, many measures are being implemented - from food packages to direct financial assistance. ”