If Ufa Shuts Down ‘Bashkort,’ Other Republic Regimes Will Step Up Campaigns Against Nationalist Groups, Gabbasov Says

Paul Goble

           

            Staunton, March 5 – Russian law does not recognize precedents the way Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence does, but Russian government practice clearly follows often in a direct line from what the powers that be are doing in Moscow to the furthest reaches of the country but sometimes in one region, then to another, and finally back to the center.

            Keeping track of the former is relatively easy given the multitude of outlets covering what the Kremlin is up to; keeping track of the latter is more difficult and more problematic not only because the outlets are fewer in number and less attended to but also because what happens in one place may only be a test – and if things don’t work out as intended, it may end there.

            But given Vladimir Putin’s propensity for “hybrid” operations, it seems likely that the Kremlin will test the waters in the regions before attempting to move in a more repressive direction at the center.   Repressions in Ingushetia, for example, preceded those in the Russian capital.

            That danger makes it even more important than ever before to keep track of moves in the regions and republics that may indicate the direction the regime may follow later elsewhere and in the major cities, not just as early warning but to give more people the chance to express opposition and thus send a message to the Kremlin that its action will entail real costs.

            Ruslan Gabbasov, an activist with the Bashkir national movement Bashkort, warns that Ufa’s current drive to ban his group as “extremist” poses exactly that danger and opens the way to precisely that kind of response by others so that the Bashkortostan government and Moscow as well will back down (idelreal.org/a/30469991.html).

            Relations between Bashkort and the republic leadership have deteriorated rapidly, with the new head of the republic attacking the group for its defense of the environment and language rights of the Bashkir people and Bashkort responding by calling on people not to vote for hm and even issuing a declaration of “no confidence” in his leadership.

            This week things have come to a head with a hearing on the extremist charges slated to be held. But that event, which the authorities expected to be a cakewalk, is turning out to be something else. On the one hand, Bashkort has brought in prominent lawyers. And on the other, the prosecution is unprepared, given that many in the Bashkir elite oppose this prosecution.

            Nonetheless, in the existing environment, the government is likely to win and Bashkort will thus become “the first Bashkir national organization” labelled “extremist.”  That will create a whole new group of martyrs for the Bashkir national movement and so may quickly prove counterproductive to the authorities, Gabbasov says.

            But he warns that if his group is declared extremist, this action far from Moscow “could open the way for the persecution of other national organizations in the national republics of the Russian Federation” with the Bashkort case serving as a model.