December 2007. The Elections

5. December 2007. The Elections

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Some experts take (or pretend to take) such phenomenal results in all seriousness. Thus, Alexander Oslon, the President of the “Public opinion” Foundation, argued that the “clan culture” of the North Caucasus, where a relatively narrow group of people forms collective public opinion.

However, majority of independent experts find quite simple reasoning for such impressive voting results. For any unbiased person that has stayed in Ingushetia at least for a short time it is absolutely clear that:

- as things go in the republic, such unanimous voting cannot happen;

- as things go in the republic, such voter turnout cannot happen.

Several weeks after the elections, the web-site “Ingushetiya.ru” announced the “I did not vote” campaign in the republic. The campaign helped collect first several thousand, and then several dozen thousand signatures from Ingush residents under the statement that they had not taken part in the voting. As reported, a total 87 thousand statements were collected, i.e. 54 % of all registered voters in Ingushetia. The organizers announced they intended to take the statements to Moscow - to the Central Election Commission and to the RF Prosecutor-General. However, this did not happen.

One should note that such a mass scale campaign covering over half of voters in the republic could not remain unnoticed. Still, the staff of “Memorial” Human Rights Center that conducted constant monitoring of events in Ingushetia, failed to notice this nearly universal visitation of voters.

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As before, the soldiers deployed in the republic “for security reasons” frequently fell victims to violence. On December 5 at about 22:00 in Nazran a fougasse (or a grenade) exploded at the crossroad of the Mutaliyev and Yuzhnaya Streets, near the stadium “Dinamo”, on the way followed by the foot military patrol of the Interior Troops (the militatary unit № 3718). Artem Mikhaylovich Vozhakov, born in 1988, was injured in the leg with a piece of shrapnel.Still, the primary targets were local “siloviks” and officials.

The “big” “counter-terrorist” operation was still under way in Ingushetia similar to the one launched eight years ago as the “second Chechen war”. As before, the warfare techniques did not strictly comply with the law. Local “counter-terrorist” operations also continued.

According to the neighbors, at about noon four persons (one dressed in civilian cloths, others in police’s uniform, all specking Chechen) arrived to the Ruslan’s house with a car VAZ-2107 (that had the registration number of the 95 Russia’ administrative region). They took Ruslan away to an unknown destination. One of the neighbors was said that Ruslan had been detained because he was in hiding under the false last name. But they did not specified, which exactly security agency detained him and were he would be delivered^th. For several days, the relatives did not have managed to know anything about the fate of Ruslan Arsunkayev.

Meanwhile, on December 14, RIA Novosti with reference to the law enforcement agencies reported⁷⁸ about the detention conducted on November 13 in the Sunzhensky district of Ingushetia “ a resident of Grozny which, according to the operational information, was part of the band of the odious militant Arbi BArayev” from January to November 2001; the detention was made by “the officers of the criminal investigation department of the MVD of the Russian Federation and the Republic [of Ingushetia, according to the context], and it was linked with a checking “of the involvement in the grave crimes”.

After known the abduction of Ruslan, his mother, Zoya Barayeva, adresse herself to the local police department of the village of Chernorechye of the Zavodsky district, but there she was redirected to the law enforcement agency of the jurisdiction of the crime – in Ingushetia.

Indeed, Arsunkayev was detained by the officers of the structure deployed on the territory of Chechnya – Criminal Investigation Office, № 2 (the Russian abbreviation is ORB-2). He was taken away to Chechnya and delivered to the ORB-2 in Urus-Martan and then transferred to the detention facility in Grozny ⁷⁹.

It is evident that the detainee had not have any process status for at least 24 hours, and his relatives had not have any information on his whereabouts for several days. As a result, he could not receive any qualified legal help.

On the night of December 18, around 2:30 a.m. a certain Magomed Medov on his way from the funeral repast over his nephew, Ruslan (Amir) Yusupovich Medov, was killed in Surkhakhi. According to the Chechen National Salvation Committee (ChNSC), Magomed Medov has fallen victim to an absurd mistake. On his way home, he noticed a suspicious car on the roadside. Magomed called his cousin Mikail Medov and said he would come to his place, then, they would drive together to the car and check why it was standing near their house. When Magomed drove his car into his cousin’s yard, Mikail took Magomed’s car for the above-mentioned suspicious car and machine-gunned it. Magomed Medov was fatally wounded. Mikail gave himself up to the Ingush law enforcement.

What else rather than fear was driving the hand of the person who killed his relative?

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The most evident addressee of these statements was not the West, but the local law enforcement agencies that see the reasons of Ingushetia events outside the republic.

On the same day, November 18, in Nazran near the former building of “Bin-Bank” on Tutayev St.two residents of Ingushetia were abducted: Salambek Dzagiyev, resided in Malgobek, und Basir Kotiyev, resided in Nazran. Abductors, carried by two passenger cars, tried to take them away to North Ossetia. The cars were stopped on an outpost of the Traffic Police (GIBDD) while leaving Ingushetia. The police officers asked armed persons carried by cars to let him check the vehicles, but they refused. Then the police officers blocked the cars and called the reinforcement. A a result, both abductors and abductees were delivered to the Nazran’s GOVD. One again it is turned out that the residents of Ingushetia were tried to be abducted by security agencies representatives – they were more than a dozen of the officers of MVD of North Ossetia and two officers of UFSB for Northe Ossetia (RSO-A). They were not disarmed, many of them kept their masks. The detained “siloviks” were kept on the territory of GOVD for a certain time and then released. They leaved the building of GOVD accompanied by the officers of a mobile detachment of MVD RF. The abductees Dzagiyev and Kotiyev were delivered to the temporary detention facilities of MVD RI. According to eyewitnesses, during the abduction Dzagiyev was severely beaten. 

On the next day Kotiyev was released and Dzagiyev transmitted to the temporary detention facilities of MVD of North Ossetia (RSO-A) and soon afterwards - to Moscow. According to the official information, he is suspected in have exploded of the train “Nevsky Express”⁸⁰.

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On December 27, the President of Ingushetia met representatives of the public and informed them about the key achievements of 2007 - the fulfillment of tasks outlined in the appeal of the President of Russia and the implementation of the priority national projects in education, health care, agriculture and housing: “the work continued towards development of the necessary social, communal and engineering infrastructure as well as the economic base with the aim of improving the well-being of the residents of the republic”. The level of life has risen, industrial enterprises have been put into operation, and a variety of social institutions have been opened. The birth rate has increased, and the infant mortality has gone down. Budget revenue has increased threefold. An industrial cluster is under construction, made of six enterprises, some investments are coming from Germany. The number of industrial enterprises has grown six times. New high technology companies have emerged.

This year was also rich with bright events in the social and political life, most significant of them being elections to the State Duma. The residents of Ingushetia have made a choice in favor of sustaining and consolidating the Russian state.

The President of Ingushetia emphasized, “we should … do our best in order to ensure that relations among people from different cities and different regions and belonging to different ethnic groups and religions grow even more cordial and strong”.