"Mothers of Dagestan": specially invited provokers started a verbal skirmish during roundtable

Svetlana Isaeva, chair of the board of the public organization "Mothers of Dagestan", has stated that "special public activists" had been invited on March 10 to the meeting of the leader of Dagestan Mukhu Aliev with Russian human rights activists and members of the Russian Public Chamber Commission on Interethnic Relations and Freedom of Religion; and the above "activists" provoked the roundtable into a verbal skirmish.

According to Ms Isaeva, the meeting was attended of "certain people, some human rights activists, whom nobody had known before, but no organizations disliked by current authorities were invited."

"Some people were specially invited to the meeting, but there was no place for me at the roundtable. They didn't want to invite me at all, but Liudmila Alekseeva had insisted that I should be invited, although I was not at the table, but somewhere in the corner. Nikolai Svanidze gave me the floor, but they didn't give me the chance to say everything I wanted," Svetlana Isaeva said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

In Ms Isaeva's opinion, the flow of negative information about "Mothers of Dagestan" originates from local FSB. There were people among the invitees to that roundtable who began cooperating with the FSB after their relatives had disappeared.

"I asked them to file applications, because we can't undertake anything without a person's application. Our appeals to the prosecutor's office are invalid without relatives' applications. But one of such women told me that she wouldn't file application to us as they had already addressed the FSB, and they were helping her: 'If they fail to help me, then I'll address your organization.'," said Ms Isaeva.