The annual youth anime festival AniDag in Dagestan was banned this year due to numerous complaints from local residents and threats to the organizers.
On November 25, Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, was to host the AniDag anime festival at the Avar Theater. A few days before the event, the organizers and the theater directorate began to receive threats from local residents. Anime fans still wanted to hold a festival, but they failed. The event was banned. Eyewitnesses said that people in suits with the police came to the theater and announced that the festival was postponed indefinitely. According to the participants of the event, a representative of the Ministry of Culture was present, who called those present unformals, drug addicts, renegades and violetheads. Eyewitnesses also said they were threatened and insulted by “religious fanatics”. Volunteers of the event told everyone to hide their badges and quickly leave the festival.
The buzz around the anime festival began with the posting on Instagram of local showman Eldar Iraziyev. He called the event “the festival of the Neformals (Nefors)” and considered it a threat to the region. "Who is silent in protest against debauchery in Dagestan, go on, the festival of gays and transvestites in this city is not far off," he wrote. In social networks, Dagestanis supported the showman and began to write threats and insults to the organizers of the event. Other users opposed similar bans. “This is a country for everyone, and attacks on people should be equated with extremism,” one of them wrote. Dagestan art critic Jamil Dagirov condemned such a decision. “We are after another Dagestan - enlightened, cultural, legal,” she said.
The organizer of the anime festival Said Tuchalov was detained in the evening. He was taken to the police station, where they had a conversation with him and wrote an explanation of his words. A few hours later Tuchalov was released. The organizers of AniDag were unhappy with this decision of the authorities, as they were preparing for the event for a long time and paid for the rent of the theater. This festival was to be the seventh in Dagestan.