PHOTO: A YOUNG RUSSIAN WOMAN SEWS HER MOUTH
A Russian lady faces charges after she stitched her lips shut in protest of the censorship of anti-Russian rallies in Ukraine.
Nadezhda Sayfutdinova, a 30-year-old activist, had sewn her own mouth shut before staging a one-woman protest in the city.
"You cannot remain mute!!! You cannot keep silent!!! The price is our consciousness. War is not peace!!! Freedom is not slavery!!! Ignorance is not power!!!" she said, holding up a placard.
She slammed Putin's Russia's "moral code" for keeping people silent about the conflict. She was eventually apprehended by police in Yekaterinburg, who used "brute force" to try to get her committed to a mental institution.
Ms Sayfutdinova has avoided being sectioned, but she is still expected to face charges of defaming the Russian military.
She informed officials of the OVD-Info human rights group: "My mouth was truly stitched with a needle and thread.
"To check the damage and remove the threads, an ambulance was dispatched to the [police] station. "I hand-sewed it." She was brought to a trauma center first, then to the city's No. 3 mental clinic.
Fedor Akchermyshev, her lawyer, and OVD-Info have asked for public help to achieve her release.
"You may call the clinic's reception or the prosecutor on duty and demand that Sayfutdinova's illegal arrest and forced hospitalization be ended," her lawyer said.
Ms. Sayfutdinova commented: "The police did not violate my rights, but they summoned a psychiatric team, who used force on me...
I was adamant about not going." She referred to her treatment as "punitive psychiatry." She stated, " "This was punitive psychiatry, and I was stunned. It was terrifying."
"I am really thankful to the individuals who attempted to assist me and rang the [clinic's] reception, demanding to let me go," she said following a large public uproar.