Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 22 – In a break
with recent practice but a return to harsher Soviet traditions, Moscow has
blocked several representatives of its numerically small nationalities from
travelling to New York to attend a United Nations conference of such peoples
from around the world which opens today.
FSB officers confiscated the Russian
passport of Rodion Sulyandziga, one of the leaders of the numerically small
peoples of the North, at Sheremetyevo airport thus preventing him from
attending the New York meeting where he was to be a co-chair of the Roundtable
on Lands, Territories and Resources (nazaccent.ru/content/13225-predstavitelyam-korennyh-malochislennyh-narodov-ne-dali.html).
Two days earlier, he reported, the
FSB did the same thing to Anna Naykachina, a senior leader of this community,
and Russian officials appear to be behind delays that have prevented Valentina
Sovkina, the chairman of the Saami parliament of the Kola Peninsula, from
attending the New York meeting as well.
And Russian officials have also
blocked several Crimean Tatars from travelling to New York. On September 18, they seized the passport of
Nadir Bekirova, the director of the International Foundation for Research and Support
of the Indigenous Peoples of Crimea, in order to prevent her from attending.
The meeting will be addressed by the
leader of one numerically small people that Moscow is no longer in a position
to prevent from taking part: Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves whose
country has played a key role in developing cooperative relations among the Finno-Ugric
nations inside and outside the borders of the Russian Federation.
No comments:
Post a Comment