Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 8 – The mistreatment
of Zarifa Sautiyeva, whose detention was extended by three months at a closed door
session of a Stavropol court and who has been denied visits by relatives, and
new arrests of Ingush who took part in the March 2019 demonstrations suggest
that the authorities now have carte blanche to do whatever they want, lawyers
say.
The courts where Ingush cases are
being held are violating their own rules to hide the lack of evidence for the charges
they are considering and the siloviki are arresting more people to try to suggest
that there was a conspiracy when in fact there isn’t one, lawyer Bilan Dzugayev
says (ekhokavkaza.com/a/30475958.html).
Seven more participants in that protest
have been arrested in the last month alone, he says; and the fact that the courts
in the North Caucasus have been able to try and sentence 22 activists up to now
proves that there are no special circumstances that could justify the draconian
approach they have adopted with respect to Sautiyeva.
The only “special circumstances” are
that the powers that be in Moscow and Magas believe that by such actions they
can intimidate the Ingush into quiescence. They may be correct in that judgment
with regard to some but for many others such behavior by officials is destroying
any respect for the authorities and opening the way to more assertive actions
by the people.
The latest example f an arrest for
participation in the March 2019 protests came last night when the siloviki
seized Zaurbek Dzaurov in Magas and then immediately transferred him incommunicado
to a jail in Nalchik in neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/346825/).
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