Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 22 – Putin’s increasing repression is so widespread that it is typically described in broadbrush terms, something that has the effect of hidings its insidious nature and the very specific negative consequences it has not just for well-known dissidents but entirely unknown groups of people.
That makes a report by Cherta journalists Lana Pulayeva and Anastasiya Martynov about how the Russian state first destroyed an NGO that sought to help the native peoples of Chukotka restore whale hunting 20 years ago and then put in its place a totally government-controlled entity that did the state’s business rather than the people’s (cherta.media/story/kitoboi/).
Local officials working with the FSB took this step, the journalists say, on the pretext of defending national security: the independent NGO had received a grant from the University of Alaska and thus became in the eyes of the Russian powers that be “a foreign agent” that had to be driven out of existence.
The group the state authorities put in its place was made up not of peoples directly affected by the whaling industry but by officials who could be counted on to do what Moscow wanted. In this case, it worked to promote the dispatch of indigenous peoples to fight in Ukraine rather than help those peoples maintain their ancient economic practices and survive.
Palayeva and Martynova describe how this occurred, with the state using a step by step approach recalling the famous story about how the frog was cooked after the water in which it was placed was gradually warmed to the boiling point. That is what is happening to the people of Chukotka who are now disappearing faster, people say, than the Arctic species they have hunted.
Friday, January 24, 2025
In Chukotka, Moscow Replaces Independent Whaling Group with Puppet One in Name of National Security but Destroying Way of Life of Indigenous Peoples
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