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Lukashenko Awarded Ig Nobel Prize in Peace Nomination

© RIA Novosti . Ilya Pitalev / Go to the mediabankPresident of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko - Sputnik International
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One of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize awards went to President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and his country’s policemen for their crackdown on “applauding in public,” according to live webcast of the awarding ceremony.

MOSCOW, September 13 (RIA Novosti) – One of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize awards went to President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and his country’s policemen for their crackdown on “applauding in public,” according to live webcast of the awarding ceremony.

The annual Ig Nobel Prize award ceremony for scientific research that “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think” was held at Harvard University on Thursday night.

The peace prize went to Lukashenko for making it illegal to applaud in public and to Belarusian policemen for “arresting a one-armed man for applauding.”

Two years ago Belarusian opposition activists held several rallies in various cities, during which they were expressing their protest against government policies and a police crackdown on protest demonstrations by applauding. Policemen were reportedly detaining protesters for clapping their hands.

In July of 2011, a court in Belarus fined a one-armed man for taking part in unsanctioned “clapping” protests in Minsk. The man was found guilty by the court of clapping in a public place. The fact that the man was clapping was proved by one of the witnesses during the trial.

Russian native Yuri Ivanenko was among the five people to receive the Ig Nobel Prize in physics this year. The researchers proved that a human being would be capable of running on water if the water reservoir were located on the moon.

The event marked the third time a Russian nominee has won an Ig Nobel. In 1992, the literary prize went to crystallographer Yury Struchkov, who published 948 articles in a decade, averaging one publication in four days. In 2002, state-run natural gas company Gazprom shared the economics award with 26 other enterprises for “adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world” through incorrect financial reporting.

Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded in all Nobel Prize nominations – physics, medicine, literature, economics and peace. They are also awarded in other spheres, such as engineering, biology, and management.

The event is organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

(This article was updated to include Ivanenko’s award, background on past Russian Ig Nobel laureates.)

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