Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 6 – A protest by almost
the entire staff of the Sunzhe district police against the announcement that
their previous head, a local man, would be replaced by an ethnic Russian from
Stavropol with no connection to the republic generated enormous support in the
republic blogosphere and achieved its goal: the outsider will not get the job.
The Ingush policemen posted a video
online of their action, and dozens of bloggers expressed their support for the
officers, with many saying that their move was an exact analogy to the refusal
of Ingush police to obey orders to disperse a crowd of protesters against Yunus-Bek
Yevkurov last year (kavkazr.com/a/30200441.html).
But
even more significant, Mikhail Korobkin, the new Ingushetia minister of the
interior who also comes from Stavoropl, met with the strikers and agreed to
their demands. He said that the new commander
of the district police will be a local Ingush, Colonel Amirkhan Kostyev rather
than the outsider. Having achieved their
goal, the strikers returned to work.
An
Ingush activist who had earlier worked in the police said that such an actin
was unprecedented. Not only are the police trained to obey orders, but because
they are well paid in a republic with high unemployment, they have “something to
lose” and thus avoid any risk to their jobs. This action, he said, highlights just
how tense the situation in the republic now is.
The
website of the Ingush police has not reported either the strike or its resolution,
preferring instead to feature a big story about a recent athletic competition. That approach was echoed in Moscow where the authorities
have mounted a major photo exhibition on contemporary Ingushetia with no
references to the recent protests (zamanho.com/?p=13440).
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