Rent-a-Mob Protests in Central Asia

By artappraiser on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 9:14pm |

By Alexander Kim, Asyl Osmonalieva, Inga Sikorskaya, Bakhtiyor Rasulov, Lola Olimova, IWPR, Jan. 6, 2012

In Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, police and politicians recruit women as professional campaigners or just as troublemakers.

[....] IWPR interviews with hired “activists”, police and commentators in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan reveal that hiring female labour is an effective way of creating a stir, at little cost and at arm’s length. Despite considerable differences in the way such women are deployed in the two states, they are typically from marginalised groups and in need of an income [....]

The phenomenon of hiring female protesters is so common that they have acquired the jocular collective nickname OBON – “special-assignment female units” – by analogy with the OMON riot police [....]

URL:

http://iwpr.net/report-news/rent-mob-protests-central-asia