Tolkien fans are the latest opressed minority in Kazahkstan. They like to go off into the woods dressed as Middle-Earthlings and have weekend-long Tolkienfests. The local secret police take a dim view.
Victims of the crackdown have been beaten and detained for up to three days without charge, according to a report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. One victim, the leader of a well-known punk rock band, was forced to squat in a tiny jail cell that was half-filled with water…
The most frequent form of harassment is less severe, said a Tolkienist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. She said Tolkien enthusiasts were stopped in the street and ordered to remove their costumes and surrender their rubber axes and home-made wooden swords. The threat of a three-day detention on charges of carrying a concealed weapon is used to extract a bribe of up to $A8, a large sum by the standards of Kazakhstan.
