Repressions in Ingushetia Intensifying But Kalimatov Focuses on Housing Problems, Mutsolgov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 25 – The powers that be in Ingushetia are nominally “new,” but “the policy being carried out remains the same,” an indication either that the new republic head Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov is not really in charge of what is going on or that the fully supports the continuation of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov’s line, according to Magomed Mutsolgov.

            Again and again, the Yabloko party official and Ingush opposition blogger says, Kalimatov has stressed that he is committed as a former judicial official to seeing that all the laws are correctly enforced; but despite repeated violations, he has said nothing but instead talked about housing and infrastructure (zamanho.com/?p=13042).

            The new republic head is either being duplicitous and fully supports what is going on or alternatively he isn’t in control of the situation and the waves of repression that are rapidly spreading from opposition leaders to the entire population of the republic are being carried out by force structures, almost certainly acting at Moscow’s behest.

            Regardless of which of these is the case, what Mutsolgov is saying indicates that the situation is getting out of hand, no longer a conflict between the residents of the republic and their head but between the Ingush nation and Moscow, a nationalizing trend that will be difficult to contain and even more difficult to reverse.

            Meanwhile, there were two other Ingush developments worthy of note today: First, Khasan Zyazikov, a protest leader who is accused of having attacked officials, a crime that carries a ten-year prison sentence upon conviction, had his detention extended to December 18 (zamanho.com/?p=12966).

            And second, the sisters of Zarifa Sautiyeva, the Ingush archivist and activist who has been under detention since June, were detained by masked men after they staged a protest demanding the release of their relative, talked to at length by police officials who warned them against any such actions in the future, but then released without charge (zamanho.com/?p=12982).