[Ravensfort] sometimes its good to live in the USA

[charlotte epps]

You won't believe what I came accross...

Police get tough with the hobbit-lovers of Kazakhstan
By Patrick Cockburn in Moscow
29 July 2001
People who dress up as hobbits have become the latest victims of a police
crackdown on unconventional lifestyles in the Central Asian state of
Kazakhstan.

J R R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is very popular in the countries of the
former Soviet Union, where thousands of fans dress up and re-enact scenes
from the book. But this innocent if dotty pursuit is seen as subversive by
the notoriously brutal police in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan.
It is part of a wider drive against those whom the police suspect of
enjoying "bohemian" lifestyles.

"We are perfectly legal," said Vitaly, a so-called "Tolkienist". "In fact we
spend most of our time in the mountains. We only hold conventions in the
city twice a year. It's our lifestyle. The police don't like it, but we
aren't going to stop. It's our entire life."

The London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) says that,
besides Tolkienists, people detained include buskers, "alternative artists",
gays and lesbians, anarchists, hippies, punks and members of dissident
religious sects, many of whom complain that they have been systematically
tortured.

Alexander, the leader of a punk-rock band in Almaty, said he was held for
two days in a so-called "water tank". This is a method commonly used by the
police to extract confessions. "They put the person arrested in a narrow
cell about 4ft 6in high, and half fill it with cold water. You cannot stand
up straight because the ceiling is too low, and you are unable to sit down
because you will be under water so you have to crouch all the time."

Tolkien's writings have been widely read in the former Soviet Union ever
since he was first translated in about 1988 during perestroika. They reached
a peak of popularity in the mid-Nineties.

Several hundred Tolkienists gather in Moscow on Thursday evenings in summer
in Neskuchny Park overlooking the Moskva river. One enthusiast, Askar
Tuganbaev, a computer salesman, said: "In Yekaterinburg [in the Urals] they
even built a fortress and fought a battle a couple of years ago with
everybody dressed up."

Mr Tuganbaev says the police in Russia are tolerant of the Tolkienists and
it is only in Kazakhstan that they are accused of "being Satanists and
conducting dark rituals".



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