Ingush People Must Act When Powers Don’t, Republic Constitutional Head Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 16 – In a virtual invitation to the Ingush people to take power into their own hands, Ayup Gagiyev, the head of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Ingushetia, says that “if the powers that be are inactive, society must organize itself” and create the structures the authorities have failed to.

            “We have not a single organization occupied with the problems of refugees from the Prigorodny district,” he points to as an example. “What is stopping us from creating one?  We must not only criticize the authorities but act on our own in order to protect out children from such tragedies in the future” (zamanho.com/?p=15146).

            In other remarks to a Moscow conference devoted to that 1992 conflict and its consequences, Gagiyev says that the Ingush have failed to exploit to the fullest their opportunities to use international bodies such as the European Court for Human Rights and the UN Committee on Human Right.

            Changing that has become absolutely necessary in the wake of the signing of the accord with Chechnya transferring 26,000 hectares of Ingush land to the neighboring republic, an action his court declared illegitimate but that Yunus-Bek Yevkurov successfully appealed to Moscow, the justice says.   

            “I am absolutely convinced,” Gagiyev says, that “the main thing for any Ingush is the preservation and development of the republic” and that “if our people will take a principled and united position on the preservation of its statehood, any plans to unite us with some other will be condemned to failure.

Gagiyev’s term on the court ends next month. Under Ingush law, he could be reappointed, but comments like this make that unlikely.

Meanwhile, in an unexpected development, the Ingush State University announced that it has begun cooperating with the Matendaran Institute in Yerevan to study the history of the Caucasus. This expands on its work with German, American, Chinese, and Kazakh centers and gives Ingushetia another channel to reach audiences abroad (yenicag.ru/ingushetiya-sovmestno-s-armeniey-zayme/323422/).