Ingush Rights Group MASHR Celebrates Its 15th Anniversary

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 3 – Many have been struck over the past two years by the actions of civil society in Ingushetia, and some have even suggested that such a community has emerged in that North Caucasus republic in response to the criminal deal between Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov in September 2018.

            But in fact, the law-abiding protests of the Ingush and the mature civil society they reflected have far deeper roots.  One of the most important, although hardly the oldest, is the MASH human rights group that was officially registered on May 3, 2005. That makes today, its leader Magomed Mutsolgov says, its 15^th birthday (kavkaz-uzel.eu/blogs/342/posts/43031).

            The group was in fact established almost a year earlier in order to push the authorities to investigate the dozens of unsolved disappearances in the republic. Not surprisingly, the authorities were not thrilled to have such pressure and resisted registering the group. But in the end, they backed down, and MASHR has been a fixture of Ingush life ever since. 

            In case after case, including one involving his brother, the authorities first went through the motions of investigating and then dropped the cases “’in connection with the impossibility of establishing the persons suspected of committing these crimes.’”  In fact, they dropped these cases for transparently political reasons because there was evidence they should have used.

According to Mutsolgov, the authorities could have solved “all these cases” if they had had the political will.” But they didn’t and don’t, and so society must come to the rescue. MASHR has provided such assistance to the families of the disappeared and over time has expanded its work into other human rights questions.

            The activist says that when  he began he “was blind” and did not understand the difficulties he was getting into but that he and other members have been helped by remarkable human rights activists from outside the republic.  Anna Politkovskaya wrote an article about Mutsolgov’s brother.

            Others who have played a role over the years were Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Natasha Estimirova, Stanislav Markelov, Magomed Yevloyev, Maksharip Aushev, Sultan-Girey Khashaguldgov “and many others, too many to name. Beyond doubt, all these were Personalities with a capital P.”

            “All these years,” Mutsolgov says, “we have helped people who have been harmed in various ways by the powers that be, helped them struggle for the restoration of their rights and for respect to the human person. All these years, we have struggled for the Constitution and the law.”

            “The people of Ingushetia suffers enormously that today the freedom of such people as Malsag Uzhakhov and Akhmed Barakhoyev and our sister Zarifa Sautiyeva are deprives of their freedoim even though they have not committed any crimes. Our hearts bleed because of this injustice,” he continues.

            “We hope that all this will pass and that someday the guilty in these repressions will be punished.” Like the Ingush people, Mutsolgov says, “history knows its heroes – and its traitors as well.”