Ingush Interior Ministry Angers Local People by Refusing to Apologize for Calling Local Youngsters ‘Mankurts’ and Punishing Their Parents

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – Last week, pupils from a Magas school slid down a monument honoring Soviet soldiers who fought in World War II. The republic’s interior ministry, which is more controlled by Moscow than many other parts of the Ingush government, was outraged and denounced the children as “mankurts” and administratively punished their parents.
    Ingush residents were furious at this characterization of the children, given that calling someone a mankurt, a term taken from Chingiz Aitmatov’s stories which refers to a slave who has lost his memory and dignity, is one of the most offensive things one can call someone in non-Russian parts of the Russian Federation.
    They demanded that the interior ministry apologize, but the ministry refused, no doubt pleasing Russian nationalists and Moscow but further exacerbating relations between the Ingush and Russian officials (fortanga.org/2024/12/podrostki-mankurty-mvd-ingushetii-oskorbilo-shkolnikov-igravshih-na-memoriale-voinskoj-slavy-v-magase/ and fortanga.org/2024/12/v-mvd-ingushetii-otkazalis-izvinyatsya-za-frazu-podrostki-mankurty-v-adres-shkolnikov/).
    It seems clear from the Fortanga reports that the Ingush were not so much defending the children as expressing their outage at officials for their decision to denounce the children and punish their parents, actions that most reasonable people in the Ingush capital saw as excessive and unnecessary but that are increasingly common in Putin’s Russia.