Union of Teips to Continue to Operate Under New Name While Appealing Order to Disband

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 29 – The leaders of the Ingush Teip of the Ingush People say they have corrected all the procedural errors the Ingush Supreme Court cited as the basis for banning the organization, will appeal its decision to higher courts, and meanwhile will continue to operate in public under a new name, the Council of Teips of the Republic of Ingushetia.

            They said that the procedural errors could have been corrected more quickly if Malsag Uzhakov, the president of the Council, was not still in jail and if it were not for the coronavirus pandemic which has prevented them from meeting as regularly as they have been accustomed to. They said that the ban was thus a purely political move (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/347654/).

            Murad Daskiyev, the acting president of the Council, says the renamed institution already includes 140 teips, up from the 112 who had been part of the pre-existing one.  He has faced legal problems for trying to organize yet another similarly named council, and it is unclear how the authorities in Magas will react to this latest move.

            Meanwhile, in another commentary on the occasion of the anniversary of the March 2019 protest, activist Elza Tomina writes on Portal Six that that demonstration showed the unity of the Ingush people as more than one-fifth of the entire population of the republic took part in it (6portal.ru/posts/спустя-год/).

            She points out that the authorities have failed to intimidate the Ingush people by repressions or by falsely accusing those in the movement of being interested in secession. All the documents, statements and symbols the protesters have used show this is false and it is seen as false by the Ingush and all others.

            Tomina says that the chief conclusions that arise from the March 2019 demonstration is that the authorities will act against the people regardless of whether the meeting is approved in advance of not, that Ingush meetings are spontaneous rather than inspired, that they are the only means of “serious resistance,” and that Moscow if not Magas will make concessions as it did by getting rid of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov.

            But what is most important, she argues, is that this meeting and the actions of the Ingush people show the vitality and significance of historical memory in the lives of the Ingush people.

            Today, Tomina continues, Magas has not let up on its repression, the divide between the people and the powers continues to widen, and the Ingush people, often divided by teip, are now a unified nation, something the authorities will have to take into consideration whether they want to or not.

            She suggested that one worrying sign is that young people who operated under the direction of their elders are increasingly hard to keep in line given that the leaders in whom they had the greatest confidence remain in jail.