Ever More Political Prisoners in Russia Come from North Caucasus, Memorial and Amnesty Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 3 – The Memorial Human Rights Center reports that the number of political prisoners in Russia has more than doubled since 2018, rising from 130 to 314; and both it and Amnesty International report that, as a result of rising protest activity in the North Caucasus, that region is the place from which an increasing fraction of them come.

            Political prisoners from Moscow or St. Petersburg almost inevitably attract more attention because of the presence of journalists and diplomats, but the shifting geography of where political prisoners come from suggests that those concerned about human rights should be focusing far more on the North Caucasus than most have up to now.

            According to a 174-page Memorial report, Political Repressions and Political Prisoners in Russia in 2018-2019 (in Russian at memohrc.org/sites/all/themes/memo/templates/pdf.php?pdf=/sites/default/files/doklad_2018-2019_0.pdf), there have been more political prisoners from the North Caucasus because there has been more activism there and because officials feel they can get away with more than in Moscow.

            The Russian government’s efforts to suppress the Ingush national movement and its repressions against journalists and Jehovah’s Witnesses has accounted for many of the new political prisoners from that region.  There likely would be even more on the list if there weren’t so many problems with counting Salafi Muslims who are also being targeted.

            The report says that many of these are charged with terrorism, something that makes it difficult to include them as political prisoners, are attacked via extra-judicial measures rather than through the courts, and often deny that they are acting on the basis of their religious convictions (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/350366/).

            Three other rights activists, Valery Borshchev, Natalya Pridutskaya, and Natalya Zvyagina, also have commented on this increasing “North Caucasus-ization” of the list of political prisoners in the Russian Federation, noting as does Memorial, that getting information about them is often very difficult (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/350450/).

            Borshchev, an activist with the Moscow Helsinki Group, says that popular activism and official repression in the North Caucasus reflects some all-Russian trends but also has its own specific features. Ingushetia shows a degree of unity in opposing the regime which is not characteristic of other regions.

            Prilutskaya of Amnesty International agrees.  She suggests that the Ingush “case” is a logical development of the Moscow protests of 2011-2012.  She adds that the arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Salafi Muslims has boosted the numbers of political prisoners from the region.

            “In recent years,” she says, “residents of the North Caucasus have begun to show greater political and civic activity which inevitably leads to criminal prosecution.” Most of this activism is non-violent, but the authorities have responded as if every such move by the population was a threat that must be countered.

And her Amnesty colleague Zvyagina points that that “there have not been major protests on regional political issues anywhere except in Moscow besides the North Caucasus.” Because that is so, it is completely understandable under the current regime why there are now more political prisoners from that region.