Moscow City Blocks Picket in Support of Ingush and Other North Caucasus Journalists Now Under Arrest

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 14 – The Moscow city authorities have rejected an application by the Journalists Union to hold a demonstration in defense of journalists now behind bars in the North Caucasus, an action intended to reduce attention to their fate but one that appears likely to backfire on the powers that be.

            The Union had sought permission to have a picket in support of Ingushetia’s Zarifa Sautiyeva, Rashid Maysigov and Izabella Yevloyeva, as well as Daghestan’s Abdulmumin Gadzhiyeva and KBR’s Martin Kochesoko  (capost.media/news/society/piket-v-zashchitu-zhurnalistov-severnogo-kavkaza-pomeshal-prokhodu-grazhdan/).

            In response, the Union has announced that it is preparing an appeal to the UN special reporter on rights and freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, an action that will attract more attention to this official abuse in the North Caucasus than any demonstration in the Russian capital might have.

            Meanwhile, lawyers for Madsat Uzhakhov, the head of the Union of Teips of the Ingush People now being held in Vladikavkaz, say that their client’s health is rapidly deteriorating because his jailors will not allow him to be resupplied with the medicines he needs for high blood pressure and diabetes (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/339049/).

            They have appealed to the courts for such medicines to be supplied Uzhakhov or that he be released from prison and put under house arrest until his trial so that he can get the drugs he needs to stay alive. So far, the courts have not responded to their requests.

            Such actions of personal abuse by the Ingush authorities are widespread but often do not attract the attention they deserve because they are so petty. But often they result in deaths or disappearances and thus must be protested against, Russian publicist Elizabeta Aleksandrova-Zorin says after visiting Ingushetia (zamanho.com/?p=11711).

            One of the authors of such illegal actions of repression, Akhmed Dzeytov, head of the Ingush Security Council, reportedly has now resigned. Despite being fined for stealing more than six million rubles (100,000 US dollars) in 2015, he had remained in office until now ( and  kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/338970/ and  fortanga.org/2019/08/ugolovnik-vo-glave-sovbeza-ushel-v-otstavku/).