Ingush Seven Trial ‘a Theater of the Absurd’ Leaving Ingush Indifferent to the Fate of Russia, Chemurziyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 15 – Next week, after 18 months of detentions and investigations, the trial of the Ingush Seven heads into its third month. This proceeding has become “a theater of the absurd” in which each of the representatives of the government is playing out his assigned role but no one finds them credible, Barakh Chemurziyev, one of the seven, writes from his jail cell.

            It would be laughable were it not so tragic, he says, because “the judicial process over innocent people, including some of advanced age shows all the cruelty and heartlessness of the existing political system in the North Caucasus with regard to ordinary citizens of Russia”

(fortanga.org/2021/01/teatr-absurda-prodolzhaet-svoyu-rabotu-zapiski-iz-sizo-barah-chemurziev/).

            And that means something that Moscow and Magas have not yet figured out: Among the victims of this “trial” are “not only the accused and their children, parents, wives and grandchildren.” It is leading to “the total discrediting of the federal powers in the eyes of the 500,000 strong Ingush people.”

            Such political trials, Chemurziyev continues, “lead to a situation in which the people become indifferent to the fate of their own state and then their occur events analogous to the February 1917 revolution, the defeat of the Red Army in 1941, and the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.”

            No one can say just which one will be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” the Ingush activist says; but the persecution in the name of prosecution of the Ingush people are adding to the weight that that unhappy animal bears. It may prove to be the one that forces that beast to fall to its knees.

            The latest session of the trial of the Ingush seven only underscored these conclusions. The prosecution witness was clearly unprepared to fill his role. He read his lines but could not answer a single question posed to him by defense lawyers, only highlighting how unfortunate a witness he was (fortanga.org/2021/01/sud-doprosil-zasekrechennogo-svidetelya-po-delu-magomeda-hamhoeva/).

            Meanwhile, in another development that also calls attention to Moscow’s failure to appreciate what is going on in Ingushetia and not just there, the Kremlin announced that it was awarding only 0.047 percent of its funds for the development of Ingush civil society organizations (6portal.ru/posts/0047-от-общей-суммы-президентских-гранто/#more-1303).

            That figure is only 16 percent of the amount that Ingushetia should receive if it were getting the same amount per capital that the rest of the people of the Russian Federation did.