Ilya Mouzykantskii, Moscow

IRON-FISTED authorities in Belarus have responded to a burst of creative modes of protest by young protesters with a strange innovation of their own: a law prohibiting people standing together and doing nothing.

A draft law prohibits the ”joint mass presence of citizens in a public place that has been chosen beforehand, including an outdoor space, and at a scheduled time for the purpose of a form of action or inaction that has been planned beforehand and is a form of public expression of the public or political sentiments or protest”.

Anyone proved to be taking part in such a gathering would be subject to up to 15 days of administrative arrest, the draft says.

A woman shows her support for the right to just stand there.  Photo: AP

Recent protests, galvanised by an economic crisis and organised through social networks by Belarusian dissidents based outside the country, have encouraged ingenious methods of expression.

People have simultaneously and publicly clapped or strolled, or had their mobile phone alarms go off together. The ever-subtler expressions of defiance have drawn extraordinary suppressive measures, as security forces enforce the harshest crackdown of President Alexander Lukashenko’s 17 years in power.

Plain-clothes police have detained nearly 2000 people since the clapping protests began in June, in many cases because they were seen clapping or standing near people who were. More than 500 have received sentences of five to 15 days.

Permits have long been required for political protests, and they are very rarely granted to the opposition. Silent gatherings, however, have never required a permit.

In an online statement, the organisers of the protests said the ”regime is hammering nails into its own coffin”.

Danila Barysevich, an administrator for the online group responsible for organising the protests, called the draft law ”absurd” and said that the law could be used against ”every queue, every group of people in a park”.

Another new focus of repression is a Russian song,We Want Change, by Viktor Tsoi.

After the song was adopted as a kind of revolutionary anthem by the growing youth protest movement, opposition news sources reported that the song had been banned from the Belarusian airwaves.

NEW YORK TIMES