In Ingushetia, mass arrests set stage for new protests

The police detain activists on the basis of photo and video materials, and anyone who attended the rally in Magas can become a suspect, states human rights defender Tamirlan Akiev. The arrests will result in an increase in the protests in Ingushetia, human rights defenders believe.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on April 23, in the city of Mineralnye Vody, law enforcers detained the Ingush activist Khasan Katsiev, and another one, Akhmed Nalgiev, in the city of Magas. On the same day, activist Ruslan Aushev was detained. All the three are suspects in the case of clashes with law enforcers at a rally in Magas.

The investigating team engaged in working on the case has collected a lot of materials, and the investigators process all the information and systematically detain the activists. Meanwhile, some of the activists detained earlier were released, said Tamirlan Akiev, the head of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" office in Ingushetia.

"The focus is sometimes on [individual] activists, but the police detain a large number of people every day. Decisions are being constantly made in administrative cases: someone can be arrested for 10 days, another can be fined, and we are already talking about a hundred [people]," Tamirlan Akiev told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"Today, they can detain anyone whom they can find in their photo and video materials," Tamirlan Akiev believes.

The mass arrests cannot decrease the protest activity, says Svetlana Gannushkina, the chair of the Civic Assistance Committee. "This always leads to the opposite result," the activist notes.

The arrests will only result in an increase in the protest, believes Moscow lawyer Kaloi Akhilgov. "Immediately after the administrative arrests of the protest leaders, many people were willing to go in the street and the youth needed real restrain. Young people who make up the majority of the population are not going to put up with such state of affairs," the lawyer believes.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 25, 2019 at 11:57 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.