In Grozny, picketers claim that media highlight murders of Caucasian natives with prejudice

On August 15, Grozny hosted a picket, participants of which demanded to solve promptly the murder of three natives of the republics of Northern Caucasus that was committed on August 9 in Moscow and also to stop the "anti-Caucasus hysteria" in the Russian media.

The protest action was provoked by the murder of Ramzan Merzhoev and Khusein Germikhanov, residents of Chechen village of Katyr-Yurt, and Azerbaijani Elkhan Abazov, a native of Dagestan. All three natives of Northern Caucasus were killed in Moscow.

According to the story of Kheda Saratova, an organizer of the action, a member of the Presidium of the "United Caucasian Forum", the protest action was attended by about 30 persons, including human rights activists and relatives of the killed men.

"In Russia, nationalism is growing every year, and the authorities are looking at it through fingers. If a crime is committed by a Caucasian, this fact becomes public, and protest actions take place. And if the opposite happens even in this case, the federal media try to whitewash criminals," picketer Madina Alieva has expressed her opinion.

A relative of one of the killed men stated that the accepted version that the guys were killed because of their debt in payment for an apartment is groundless. "They paid for the apartment for two months in advance. There are two versions of what happened. According to one of them, the sudden 'problem' was the desire of the room's owner to kick the tenants out with no return of money paid in advance. According to another version, the room's owner found out that the young people who worked part time in Moscow in the security service had a lump sum of money on hands, and he wanted to take their money," the source told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.