Ingushetia Head Launches New Wave of Intimidation and Repression against His Opponents

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 3 – Yunus-Bek Yevkurov has launched a broad new wave of intimidation and repression against his opponents in Ingushetia, apparently having concluded that Moscow will back him up as long as he prevents a resumption of the kind of protests over his border accord with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov.

            After the February 23^rd meeting to celebrate Russia’s Day of Fatherland Defenders and commemorate the 75^th anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of the Ingush, republic officials summoned 17 members of the republic parliament for questions, raided the homes of 10 activists and the Red Cross office looking for extremist materials, closed the office of the opposition, and shuttered a market belonging to the republic’s imam.

This sweep is described at mbk-news.appspot.com/region/deputatov-v-prokuraturu-silovikov-k-aktivistam/ fortanga.org/2019/03/ingushskij-komitet-natsionalnogo-edinstva-vynudili-zakryt-ofis-v-zdanii-tts-v-nazrani/, fortanga.org/2019/02/evkurov-posle-23-fevralya-nachal-novuyu-volnu-presledovanij-aktivistov-protesta/ and zamanho.com/?p=4565.

            The targets of these moves link them to calls by six deputies to return to Ingushetia the Prigorodny district that has been occupied by North Ossetia since a violent conflict between the two republics in the early 1990s, a call that appears to some to open the door to new protests like those against the September 26 border accord between Ingushetia and Chechnya.

            Yevkurov’s opponents say that the republic head’s actions appear to have been triggered by their calls for the return to Ingushetia of the Prigorodny district that was populated by Ingush before the deportation but that was transferred to North Ossetia after that time, an idea that has become even more popular since Yevkurov gave away 10 percent of the republic to Chechnya.

            Set-Salim Akhilgov, a deputy in the republic parliament and one of those targeted by Yevkurvo, says that the idea of getting back Prigorodny district has enormous popular support and that the decision of the Russian Constitutional Court regarding the Chechen-Ingush transfer has only added to it.

            The Russian court said that the new borders between those two republics was a simple matter of justice, thus giving the Ingush who want Prigorodny district back hope that they can make the same argument about that territory. They are likely to but it seems improbable that either Yevkurov or Moscow will accept their arguments.