Paul Goble
Staunton,
December 14 – In the latest indication that Circassian opposition to the Sochi
Olympics is far more widespread that Moscow claims and that Russian President
Vladimir Putin is afraid of it, Russian officials yesterday arrested 15
Circassian activists in the North Caucasus who oppose holding the Olympics on
the site of the genocide of their people in 1864.
Following online
protests by Circassians and others, announcement of plans for demonstrations in
New York and other cities around the world, and a protest by Valery
Khatazhukov, a leading human rights activist in Kabardino-Balkaria, the Russian
authorities backed down and then released the Circassians (natpress.ru/index.php?newsid=8596
and facebook.com/groups/antisochi/permalink/641650739211007/).
This represents a defeat for
Vladimir Putin who had to oust the KBR governor to get his way: Arsen Kanonkov apparently refused to carry out the arrests
on trumped up charges, while the new man, Yuri Kokov, who earlier helped create
an FSB unit to fight “extremism,” was entirely prepared to follow Putin’s line
and deployed massive numbers of security officers.
On
Friday, pro-Moscow officials in KBR are known to have arrested Ibragim Yaganov,
Ruslan Kabiyev, Ruslan Kesh, Yevgeny Tashu, Acumij Hilmi, Amin Zeh, Adnan
Khuade, and eight others. Kesh and Tashu were released after a few
hours; all the others have since been set free.
As it has done
so often in the past, Moscow is behaving far more brutally in regions where
there are few outside journalists, confident that it can suppress much of the
story or at least put its own spin on it with commentaries that few outsiders
will be able to check and then challenge.
But despite that, news about the
arrests came out via telephone calls, social media reports and the efforts of
some outlets in the region, including that of the Republic of Georgia. As a
result, Moscow retreated from this latest act of harassment (apsny.ge/2013/mil/1387002678.php, natpress.ru/index.php?newsid=8594 and timur-kuashev.livejournal.com/164605.html).
No comments:
Post a Comment