Moscow and Magas Continue to Try to Shut Down Ingush Council of Teips

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 2 --  A Russian court has fined Murad Daskiyev, acting president of the Council of Teips of the Republic of Ingushetia, for writing a letter to Vladimir Putin in March declaring that members of his organization would boycott the referendum on constitutional amendments (fortanga.org/2020/06/golosovat-za-popravki-v-konstitutsiyu-ne-budem-daskiev/).

            Prosecutors said they had brough charges because Daskiyev was acting on behalf of an organization that the authorities had earlier banned as extremist, but he and his lawyers point out that the organization he is acting head of has a different name than the one that the courts outlawed earlier and thus is not illegal.

            But officials say that the name change from Council of Teips of Ingush People to Council of Teips of the Republic of Ingushetia is a smokescreen that Daskiyev and others are using to try to continue to function despite the ban.  However, the courts are not even being careful themselves in making the necessary distinctions.

            Daskiyev for his part says that authorities are ignoring their own decisions and riding roughshod over the rights of the people of Ingushetia.  He says Moscow and Magas want to shut down not just his group which represents most of the people of the republic but all groups which take a position different than the authorities.

            “I am certain that the powers that be do not want the Council of Teips to exist. But how can it disappear? For these are the elected representatives of the people. We will proceed to the international court [the European Court for Human Rights], but we will not allow this mocking of our group,” Daskiyev says.

            Meanwhile, the Memorial Human Rights Organization released its latest report on the state of repression in Ingushetia. According to the group, 23 activists have already been sentenced for participation in the March 2019 demonstration and 18 more remain under investigation, with most of those still in detention (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/350371/).

            The majority of the latter in full or in part deny their guilt, and many of them argue that all these prosecutions bear “an obviously political character” intended to allow the authorities “to neutralize the opposition in the republic,” Memorial reports. It notes that the rights of the accused have been abused by among other things having trials moved outside Ingushetia.

            One of those prisoners, Rezvan Ozdoyev, was released today immediately after being sentenced to a prison camp by a Stavropol court. He was released because, under the formula used to calculate time served, he had already completed his sentence in detention before he was convicted and sentenced (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/350360/).