20:48, 17 May 2021

Social network users argue about sincerity of apology of Lezginka dancer in Derbent

A young man from a Dagestan village has apologized for performing a Lezginka dance at a burial site in Derbent. Screenshot of the post https://www.instagram.com/p/CO8QGWsqmX9/

A young man from a Dagestan village has apologized for performing a Lezginka dance at a burial site in Derbent, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) has informed. Some users treat the apologies as sincere, while others have noted that the burial site was marked insufficiently informatively.

Dancing Lezginka, unlike other dances, attracts law enforcers' special attention in Southern Russia. Thus, on December 31, 2019, in Derbent, four men from the Kayakent District were detained after they stopped cars on the road and danced Lezginka on the carriage way.

On August 11, 2017, in the city of Gelendjik, policemen detained young people dancing Lezginka by using a tear gas canister, as a result of which one of the holidaymakers was injured. Two of the detainees were arrested for five days on charges of petty hooliganism and disobedience to the police. In doing so, law enforcers insisted that "Lezginka is banned in the Krasnodar Territory." However, Asker Sokht, a deputy chairman of the Krasnodar branch of the NGO "Adyge Khase", has stated that authorities deny any ban on Lezginka.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on May 17, 2021 at 10:15 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.