Ingush National Unity Committee Joins Campaign for Boycott of September 8 Elections

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 23 – The Ingush National Unity Committee (IKNE) has added its voice to calls by the Yabloko Party and the Union of Teips of the People of Ingushetia to boycott the September 8 elections in the republic. Of the major opposition groups, only the People’s Council of Ingushetia has not joined the call yet.

            (On the spread of calls for a boycott over the last 24 hours, see kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/339400/, fortanga.org/2019/08/ingushskij-komitet-natsionalnogo-edinstva-sdelal-ofitsialnoe-zayavlenie-po-predstoyashhim-8-sentyabrya-vyboram/ and doshdu.com/ikne-prizval-ignorirovat-vybory-v-ingushetii/.)

            Meanwhile, lawyers denounced the republic Supreme Court’s failure to overturn a lower court decision holding Yunus-Bek Yevkurov’s manipulation of the republic legislature as a horrific mistake because it is obvious that “a crime was committed by the leaders of the republic (fortanga.org/2019/08/v-parlamente-bylo-sovershenno-prestuplenie-pervymi-litsami-respubliki/).

            And in a sign that the upcoming trial of 13 dismissed policemen for failing to obey orders to use force to disperse protesters, some of the officers have begun to talk about what has been taking place behind the scenes with the siloviki, a potential embarrassment at the least and a trigger for new protests quite possibly (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/339373/).

            The implications of what has been going on in Ingushetia for Russia as a whole were the subject of a lengthy Znak article by Vadim Klyuvgant who represents four of the policemen and says the situation in the republic is an echo of the 2012 Bolotnoye affair (znak.com/2019-08-23/v_ingushetii_idet_svoe_bolotnoe_delo_rasskazyvaet_advokat_vadim_klyuvgant).

                According to the Moscow lawyer, officials and siloviki are acting in Ingushetia and may soon act elsewhere on the principle that “if there are no disorders, it is necessary to provoke them. Or invent them. And then apply force not to those who are guilty of something but to those the police can seize most easily.”

            This process, Kluvgant continues, involves the unjustified and excessive use of force, a growing number of cases in which administrative charges are transformed over night into criminal ones, and the widespread use of provocateurs who have been planted with the protest movement to discredit opposition leaders.

            The Pen and Paper firm attorney also says that the Ingush model involves searching for “’an external enemy’” to blame and for finding or inventing if it doesn’t exist, “’foreign influence and financing.’”