Ingush Activist in Kazakhstan Calls on Putin to Pardon Ingush Seven and Return Ingush Lands to Republic

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 18 – Salman Geroyev, the 82-year-old head of the Chechen-Ingush Ethnocultural Center in Kazakhstan to which he was deported as a child, has called on Vladimir Putin to pardon the Ingush Seven and to return to Ingushetia lands not restored to it after the end of the deportation and given away to Chechnya more recently.

            The Ingush activist, who is also vice president of the Assembly of Peoples of Kazakhstan, speaks passionately about what he calls the obvious injustice in all three cases in a Youtube clip (youtube.com/watch?v=W08tZLfY9Mw and fortanga.org/2021/12/obshhestvennyj-deyatel-iz-kazahstana-poprosil-putina-otpustit-osuzhdennyh-liderov-protesta/).

            The conviction of the Ingush Seven, Geroyev says, is “the latest act of genocide against the Ingush people” who had expected the Prigorodny District to be returned to them under the terms of the reversal of their exile and who, instead, have suffered yet again by having 10 percent of their republic’s lands given away to Chechnya in 2018.

            The former head of the republic, “appointed by You,” he continues, “did not undertake any steps to fulfill his responsibilities for the security of its citizens and the preservation of the territorial integrity of the republic.” As a result, and “without any organization, the people of Ingushetia protested.

            They went into the streets to protest in a demonstration the authorities had authorized to take place. They hoped they would be heard by all, “including You, Vladimir Vladimirovich” and “in the hope that You would help them restore justice and truth.”  That hasn’t happened; instead, the Ingush Seven have been convicted of crimes they did not commit.

            “Let the innocent go … correct this crying illegality and injustice … devote attention to the fate of the Ingush people [and] create a commission to study the situation this people finds itself in Vacate the sentence in the Ingush case for it concerns all the representatives of my people wherever in the world they are found.”

            In his appeal to Putin, Geroyev also says he finds it inexplicable that the head of Ingushetia, its government, its deputies, and other officials who are obligated to defend the people and the territorial integrity of the republic have instead remained silent and passive in the face of these events.

            Geroyev’s appeal is noteworthy for three reasons. First, it is an indication of just how seriously Ingush are taking the conviction of the Seven. Second, it shows how the Ingush Seven case is now linked not only with the handover of land to Chechnya but also to the loss of Ingush land to North Ossetia after the fighting in 1992.

            And third, and most important, it is an indication that Ingush anger about their own republic leaderships is increasingly extending to Moscow as well which after all installed those leaders and lies behind what they do.