Ruslan Isayev, North Caucasus – Over the past month the situation in Ingushetia
has gotten worse. There has been a sharp increase in illegal arrests of people,
refugees in particular. Ingush law enforcement bodies carry out operations almost
every day to detain offenders who, quite often, show armed resistance.
In the Pliyevo village, for example, an operation was organized to search for
the unknown offender who had shot dead an Ingush policemen next to his house.
A number of local citizens as well as refugees were arrested in order to check
their possible participation in the crime and their affiliation with Chechen resistance
fighters. Firearms were seized in several houses.
In the Altiyevo village near Nazran, armed men abducted two Chechen refugees working
on a private construction project. Three cars without a license plate came to
the construction site and masked men jumped off. They made four workers get into
the cars, threatening them with guns. On their departure they dropped two workers
of Ingush nationality. So far the Ingush law enforcement bodies have not been
able to trace the kidnappers. However, one version is that the kidnap was carried
out by the forces of the Moscow-backed Chechen bodies.
As for refugee camps, the situation has also worsened. Members of the Russian
Federal Security Service (FSB), coming from other Russian regions, are present
in every camp. Their task is to prevent any foreign journalists from entering
the camps. When journalists arrive they are asked to leave the camp in accordance
with some invisible order which allegedly regulates the contact between refugees
and journalists.