Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 19 – All too often,
those charged with political crimes in Russia are left to face the situation alone,
but the Ingush Committee of National Unity is a happy exception: it has
collected 730,000 rubles (12,000 US dollars) to pay for their lawyers and any
fines (fortanga.org/2019/05/otchet-po-postupleniyam-dlya-sbora-pozhertvovanij-zaderzhannym-aktivistam/
).
Money has been coming in from Ingush
communities in Moscow and other parts of the Russian Federation as well as
locally, but the Committee says that the costs for lawyers and fines far exceed
what they have managed to collect and are calling on Ingush and others to contribute
what they can to help those falsely accused and fined.
The arrests and fines continue, with
some activists now being fined more than once and not just for the March
protests but for those last fall as well (zamanho.com/?p=7899,
kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/335636/ and
zamanho.com/?p=7929).
Not only has the number of cases grown
but the absurdity of many of them has become evidence. Murad Daskiyev, acting
head of the Union of Teips of the Ingush People, who has been accused of
disseminating false news says judges keep delaying his hearing because even
they know the charges against him are what is false in this situation (zamanho.com/?p=7911).
Meanwhile, the Ingush police program
to get the population to turn in its guns as a way of preventing violence
appears to have run out of steam. In the last week, the police reported, only
five people turned in weapons to the authorities even though a large share of
the population is armed (zamanho.com/?p=7918).
No comments:
Post a Comment