150 Ingush Police Demand End to Practice of Appointing Outsiders as Senior Officers

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 11 – Building on the police strike a week ago in Sunzhe over the appointment of an officer from Stavropol, 150 Ingush police have sent a letter to the republic’s interior minister, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, demanding an end to the practice of appointing non-Ingush outsiders to senior positions in the police and the interior ministry.

            “Practically all senior positions in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Ingushetia, from the minister, deputy minister, chiefs of administrations and their deputies, heads of departments and their deputies and also a large number of senior officers … are people who have come by contract from other regions,” they say (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/341093/).

            This not only precludes advancement by Ingush police but is especially intolerable for two reasons. On the one hand, the police force is one of the few places where Ingush men can get jobs in the current economic slump.  And on the other, the outsiders are paid far more than locals, sometimes even three times as much when occupying the same level of position.

            Meanwhile, two other statements appeared from those Ingush now in detention.  Barakh  Chemurziyev said in his that the courts of the region have been turned into “circuses” as far as he and the 32 other detainees are concerned (fortanga.org/2019/10/kogda-pravosudie-prevrashhaetsya-v-tsirk-politzaklyuchennyj-barah-chemurziev-obratilsya-s-otkrytym-pismom-iz-sizo/).

            And Zarifa Sautiyeva released her declaration made during her unsuccessful appeal to be released from detention and allowed to wait for trial under house arrest. She said nothing could compensate for “the moral suffering” she has experienced and that she awaited the judgment of the Most High on her jailors and courts (fortanga.org/2019/10/z-sautieva-nichto-ne-mozhet-vozmestit-moi-moralnye-stradaniya-ot-nahozhdeniya-v-sizo/).

            A third prisoner, Bagaudin Myakiyev, had his detention extended until December 25 (zamanho.com/?p=13708); and a furth, Malsag Uzhakhov, had his appeal against his earlier extension rejected by a court in Stavropol (zamanho.com/?p=13644 and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/341078/).

            And there are reports, still unconfirmed, that the authorities had finally managed to arrest Akhmed Pogorov, the former Ingush interior minister turned protester, who has been on Russia’s wanted list for more than five months and who has infuriated officials by his continuing video appeals to the Ingush people (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/341113/).