Illegal Actions Against Ingush People Threaten to ‘Break Apart Our State,’ Mutsolgov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 24 – Because the Ingush are a numerically small people and cannot afford to lose any of their members, they are committed to keeping their protests within the law lest the powers that be use any violation to repress them by violent means as they have done in the past, according to Magomed Mustolgov.

            But their ability to do so, the Ingush rights activist and blogger says, is constantly challenged by the illegal actions of the authorities who lie, fabricate cases, repress innocent people, and engage in actions such as the border deal with Chechnya that violate the laws and constitutions of the country (kavkaz-uzel.eu/blogs/342/posts/40632).

            “These manipulations of the laws and the legalized repression are very dangerous,” Mutsolgov continues, because “in fact people who fabricate the case around the Ingush Committee for National Unity,” a body set up to ensure that the protests remained within legal limits, “are committing a crime against the entire people and trying to break apart our state.”

            These are “very dangerous games” not just for Ingushetia but for the Russian Federation as a whole, at least in part because the illegal actions by the powers that be in Magas and Moscow threaten to push the population into taking illegal actions in response, something that is always a risk and that the powers make use of provocateurs to promote.

            The Ingush people remain committed to staying within the law even as those charged with enforcing the law violate it as if it had no meaning for them, the activist says. That is why the Ingush Committee for National Unity was set up. But in addition to believing in the value of law as such, the Ingush have another reason to behave in this way.

             Being a numerically small nation, the Ingush know that they cannot afford to risk the loss of any of their young people and thus the future of the people. When the protests began a year ago, “about 500 young people” wanted to go to the territory Yunus-Bek Yevkurov illegally gave to Chechnya and set up a tent encampment to prevent Grozny from taking the last.

            Their elders talked them out of it because they could easily see what that could lead to – the deaths of at least some of them, a conclusion they drew after three corpses were found. If things had gotten out of hand, that number could easily have risen. No Ingush wanted to take that risk.

            “Ingush society has tried to return the situation to the legal field but officials in power … are demonstrating that laws are not written for them and in fact for them, the Constitution does not exist either. Instead, they intend to dispose of the state as if it was their personal property,” Mutsolgov says.

            Despite this, he continues, the Ingush people decided a year ago “to do everything possible to avoid new victims. For the last 15 to 17 years, we have already lost more than 2,000 people, by kidnappings, murders, and extra-judicial executions. We cannot permit any further such tragedies in our society.” 

            “We have not forgotten about the injustice which has continued already for more than 75 years connected with the deportation and genocide of the Ingush people.”  And because we have not forgotten such losses, we will do everything to avoid them now and in the future.”