In the village of Surkhakhi, some ten kilometers from Nazran, Ingushetia’s largest city, three thousand mourners gathered in the small cemetery to bid farewell to Maksharip Aushev.
The human rights activist was assassinated about 9:30 am on Sunday as he was driving his Lada on the Kavkaz highway, near the village of Nartan, in western Kabardino-Balkaria.
Gunmen using automatic weapons fired some sixty shots at the vehicle, killing him instantly and severely wounding the woman seated next to him, his cousin.
The assassins quickly fled the scene in a silver Vaz.
Mr. Aushev, a businessman who came from a prominent family, had become a human rights activist only recently, after the kidnapping of his son and nephew in 2007.
Suspecting that the state’s security services were the instigators of the crime, he organized a series of protests against the Ingush authorities, and the republic’s President, Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB general.
His campaign succeeded in obtaining their release. He started working in human rights in Ingushetia and tried to combat abductions. He was a very brave man, said Tatyana Lokshina, deputy director of the Moscow branch of Human Rights Watch.
He then pursued his campaign and worked with Magomed Yevloyev, a lawyer and opposition activist as well as a journalist who ran an independent news agency, ingushetia.org.
The agency widely reported on human rights abuses and corruption in the republic.
This may be the reason why Mr. Yevloyev, who was 37, was shot dead while in police custody, August 31, 2008.
Arriving on a commercial flight from Moscow, which he happened to share with the republic’s President, Mr. Zyazikov, he was arrested at the Magas Airport, ostensibly because his testimony was required in a criminal investigation involving the bombing of a local official’s house.
According to the police, Mr. Yevloyev was accidentally shot as he tried to seize the gun of one of the police officers accompanying him in the van driving them to Nazran.
He died at the Nazran hospital.
The authorities had tried, on a number of occasions to shut down his website because of its highly critical content, but were unable to do so, the server being located in the United States.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) made light of the official version of his death, calling it instead an assassination, the aim of which was to undermine the political opposition in Ingushetia.
Mr. Aushev took over ingushetia.org after its founder’s death and pursued its mission, all the more vital as human rights abuses of all kinds were rampant in the republic.
The crimes in Ingushetia, although on a far smaller scale, evoke the thousands of enforced disappearances, killings, and torture cases that plagued Chechnya for more than a decade. Russia’s brutal counterinsurgency policies are antagonizing local residents. Far from ending the insurgency, ‘dirty war’ tactics are likely to further destabilize the situation in Ingushetia and beyond in the North Caucasus, said Tanya Lokshina, as she presented a HRW report on Ingushetia in June 2008.
Against this background of increasing insurgent activity, law enforcement and security forces are carrying out abduction-style detentions of those suspected of insurgency; those abducted are regularly tortured, and sometimes “disappear.” Abduction-style detentions and killings in Ingushetia often happen during “special operations,” which resemble the pattern of abusive sweep operations and targeted raids seen in earlier years in Chechnya. Groups of armed personnel arrive in a given area, often wearing masks. They do not provide the residents with any explanation for the operation, force entry into homes, beat some of the residents, and damage their property, she added.
Last fall, in a renewed effort to bring peace to the republic, Moscow repudiated Murat Zyazikov and replaced him with Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, a former intelligence official.
The new president promised to put an end to human rights abuses in Ingushetia, and earned the trust and support of Mr. Aushev. He accepted the President’s proposal to become a member of his new Council for Human Rights, abandoned politics, and resumed his business career.
Yet, Mr. Yevkurov was not able to halt the violence. Last June, he was grievously wounded when a suicide bomber attacked his motorcade.
The situation began to significantly deteriorate in 2004, due to the violence wracking neighboring Chechnya, and spreading throughout the North Caucasus.
On June 22 of that year, a band of insurgents led by the radical rebel leader Shamil Basayev stormed into Nazran and killed over 100 officers of the security forces.
The counterinsurgency measures adopted by the authorities only fueled the crisis. In fact, the insurgency was becoming more and more active, reaching unprecedented levels by mid-summer 2007. Insurgents regularly attacked police officers, military personnel and officials-all the way up to the highest levels. In response, law enforcement staff conducted aggressive special operations. They killed young men suspected of insurgent activity in the middle of public streets, in broad daylight, and in some cases in front of their relatives in their own houses, wrote Tanya Lokshina.
It was in this context that Mr. Yevkurov was selected to crush the insurgency. He sought however, to adopt a novel strategy: resolve the crisis by respecting the law.
Unfortunately, his efforts have failed and he almost lost his life in the process.
Those intent on promoting human and civil rights through legal means are clearly at risk in Medvedev and Putin’s Russia.
When they are not gunned down, they are simply ignored.
Russia does not even pretend to be a democracy anymore, as the recent local elections evince.
Sadly, the Russian people do not seem to care.
The party of MM. Medvedev and Putin, United Russia, won an overwhelming victory in local elections held nationwide, earlier this month.
In Moscow alone, United Russia won over 90% of the vote, thus 32 out of 35 seats. The Communists won the other three.
The leader of Yabloko, a small pro-Western party, Sergei Mitrokhin, said he would lodge a formal complaint in order to obtain the cancellation of the elections.
In his polling station, Yabloko officially received zero votes, even though both he and his wife voted for the party. Independent electoral observers Golos claimed there was ballot stuffing, impersonation and biased campaigns in many parts of Russia and warned the country could soon revert to a Soviet-style society, wrote Reuters.
Though the election was obviously rigged, there was no reaction of any kind, apart from a few feeble complaints on the part of some opposition parties.
People are passive because they feel that there is absolutely no opportunity to change the system, Andrei Gerasimov, a Russian blogger told The New York Times.
As such, very few bother to actually vote.
In Moscow, 36% of voters officially participated, though the actual figure is most likely closer to 22%. The invisible 14%, needless to say, all voted for United Russia.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, for his part, was appalled, this is a complete failure of political strategists, who were guided by the utterly worthless principle that 'it doesn't matter how the people vote; what matters is how we count.' In everyone's eyes, the elections turned into a mockery of the people and showed a deep disrespect for their voices. The party of power gained the result it needed by discrediting political institutions and the very party itself, he declared after the election
The Putin strategy, since 2000, of concentrating power in the Kremlin, and marginalizing and demoralizing the opposition has clearly succeeded.
However, it has also led to the complete demobilization of the Russian people. They no longer participate, because the system does not need them. One recent poll indicated that 94 percent of respondents believed that they could not influence events in Russia. According to another, 62 percent did not think that elections reflect the people’s will, wrote the NYT.
One can safely say that the word democracy has ceased to have any meaning at all in Russia today.
Yet, what is even more worrisome is that those who believe in the rule of law, in justice and democracy and actively and publicly promote these values are in danger, and sooner or later will be killed.
That is the kind of country Russia has become, one where thugs rule, and intimidation and violence are the most potent and effective forms of expression.
Those who refuse to resort to such vile means are ignored and gunned down if they become too officious.
Maksharip Aushev, who died at the age of 43, knew that his life was in danger. All activists in Russia know that, and that is why all those who refuse to be cowed into submission, and continue to fight for justice and democracy deserve not only our respect and admiration, but the vigorous support of Europe and the US as well.
Last September, he was nearly kidnapped.
In a recent interview, he claimed he had received very strong information that I was going to be killed. Yet, he refused to flee…
So, who killed him, and why did they do it?
Aushev had many enemies, particularly in former President Zyazikov’s entourage.
For Magomed Khazbiyev, an Ingush opposition leader, the answer is obvious, the blame lies with the government and Yevkurov -- first of all with President Yevkurov, and then former [Ingush] leaders, and other officials, right up to the Kremlin. It is the bandit government of this country and its bandit methods that are to blame for [Aushev's] murder, he declared.
Maksharip was a famous and well-respected person in the republic, President Yevkurov said on Sunday. He suspects that elements within the security apparatus may have committed the deed
Yesterday, in a significant gesture of respect, he went to the Aushev house to pay his condolences, and said he would lead the murder investigation himself…
In Medvedev and Putin’s Russia however, the assassins are never arrested, let alone tried.
No one is ever held accountable. The authorities have no use for human rights activists, independent journalists, those interested in truth and justice.
Only the laws that suit them are enforced, visibly.
You see how they kill journalists and human rights workers, it continues, and there is no real investigation into any of them. It hasn’t ended, and it won’t end, Magomed Mutsolgov, of the human rights organization Mashr, told the NYT.
Anna Politkovskaya, Magomed Yevloyev, Stanislas Markelov, Natalia Estemirova,
Zarema Sadulayeva and now Maksharip Aushev…
Who shall be next, Magomed Khazbiyev, for there will be another victim and another and another as long as the likes of MM Medvedev and Putin rule Russia.
Sadly, the new killing ... clearly shows an atmosphere of impunity in the North Caucasus. Civil activities, human rights and opposition activities have virtually become a form of suicide, Tatyana Lokshina told the Interfax news agency.
The Russians and their henchmen are meticulously eliminating the political opposition in the North Caucasus, those seeking justice and respect for human rights through legal channels, and civilized means.
The tragedy is that those demanding justice are now likely to resort to violence to achieve their goals.
Aushev’s death is a big loss because this man has shown that there can be another way besides violence, besides armed resistance, said Aleksandr Cherkasov, of the Russian human rights organization Memorial, which was recently awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament. There is a nonviolent way toward justice. He was a remarkable person, and it is a big loss for Ingushetia and the whole of Russia. Memorial mourns him.
That non-violent path is losing credibility, however.
Soon, the only opponents remaining will be the ones bearing guns and planting bombs.
That, obviously, is Russia’s strategy.
Insurgent violence will then justify and legitimize its own brutal counterinsurgency campaign.
Violence may then subside, but at what cost?
A semblance of peace may be restored, as in Kadyrov’s Chechnya, but justice, the rule of law, civil and human rights, democracy, all the trappings of a civilized society will have been destroyed in the process.
For that signal achievment we can thank Mr. Putin…
The human rights activist was assassinated about 9:30 am on Sunday as he was driving his Lada on the Kavkaz highway, near the village of Nartan, in western Kabardino-Balkaria.
Gunmen using automatic weapons fired some sixty shots at the vehicle, killing him instantly and severely wounding the woman seated next to him, his cousin.
The assassins quickly fled the scene in a silver Vaz.
Mr. Aushev, a businessman who came from a prominent family, had become a human rights activist only recently, after the kidnapping of his son and nephew in 2007.
Suspecting that the state’s security services were the instigators of the crime, he organized a series of protests against the Ingush authorities, and the republic’s President, Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB general.
His campaign succeeded in obtaining their release. He started working in human rights in Ingushetia and tried to combat abductions. He was a very brave man, said Tatyana Lokshina, deputy director of the Moscow branch of Human Rights Watch.
He then pursued his campaign and worked with Magomed Yevloyev, a lawyer and opposition activist as well as a journalist who ran an independent news agency, ingushetia.org.
The agency widely reported on human rights abuses and corruption in the republic.
This may be the reason why Mr. Yevloyev, who was 37, was shot dead while in police custody, August 31, 2008.
Arriving on a commercial flight from Moscow, which he happened to share with the republic’s President, Mr. Zyazikov, he was arrested at the Magas Airport, ostensibly because his testimony was required in a criminal investigation involving the bombing of a local official’s house.
According to the police, Mr. Yevloyev was accidentally shot as he tried to seize the gun of one of the police officers accompanying him in the van driving them to Nazran.
He died at the Nazran hospital.
The authorities had tried, on a number of occasions to shut down his website because of its highly critical content, but were unable to do so, the server being located in the United States.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) made light of the official version of his death, calling it instead an assassination, the aim of which was to undermine the political opposition in Ingushetia.
Mr. Aushev took over ingushetia.org after its founder’s death and pursued its mission, all the more vital as human rights abuses of all kinds were rampant in the republic.
The crimes in Ingushetia, although on a far smaller scale, evoke the thousands of enforced disappearances, killings, and torture cases that plagued Chechnya for more than a decade. Russia’s brutal counterinsurgency policies are antagonizing local residents. Far from ending the insurgency, ‘dirty war’ tactics are likely to further destabilize the situation in Ingushetia and beyond in the North Caucasus, said Tanya Lokshina, as she presented a HRW report on Ingushetia in June 2008.
Against this background of increasing insurgent activity, law enforcement and security forces are carrying out abduction-style detentions of those suspected of insurgency; those abducted are regularly tortured, and sometimes “disappear.” Abduction-style detentions and killings in Ingushetia often happen during “special operations,” which resemble the pattern of abusive sweep operations and targeted raids seen in earlier years in Chechnya. Groups of armed personnel arrive in a given area, often wearing masks. They do not provide the residents with any explanation for the operation, force entry into homes, beat some of the residents, and damage their property, she added.
Last fall, in a renewed effort to bring peace to the republic, Moscow repudiated Murat Zyazikov and replaced him with Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, a former intelligence official.
The new president promised to put an end to human rights abuses in Ingushetia, and earned the trust and support of Mr. Aushev. He accepted the President’s proposal to become a member of his new Council for Human Rights, abandoned politics, and resumed his business career.
Yet, Mr. Yevkurov was not able to halt the violence. Last June, he was grievously wounded when a suicide bomber attacked his motorcade.
The situation began to significantly deteriorate in 2004, due to the violence wracking neighboring Chechnya, and spreading throughout the North Caucasus.
On June 22 of that year, a band of insurgents led by the radical rebel leader Shamil Basayev stormed into Nazran and killed over 100 officers of the security forces.
The counterinsurgency measures adopted by the authorities only fueled the crisis. In fact, the insurgency was becoming more and more active, reaching unprecedented levels by mid-summer 2007. Insurgents regularly attacked police officers, military personnel and officials-all the way up to the highest levels. In response, law enforcement staff conducted aggressive special operations. They killed young men suspected of insurgent activity in the middle of public streets, in broad daylight, and in some cases in front of their relatives in their own houses, wrote Tanya Lokshina.
It was in this context that Mr. Yevkurov was selected to crush the insurgency. He sought however, to adopt a novel strategy: resolve the crisis by respecting the law.
Unfortunately, his efforts have failed and he almost lost his life in the process.
Those intent on promoting human and civil rights through legal means are clearly at risk in Medvedev and Putin’s Russia.
When they are not gunned down, they are simply ignored.
Russia does not even pretend to be a democracy anymore, as the recent local elections evince.
Sadly, the Russian people do not seem to care.
The party of MM. Medvedev and Putin, United Russia, won an overwhelming victory in local elections held nationwide, earlier this month.
In Moscow alone, United Russia won over 90% of the vote, thus 32 out of 35 seats. The Communists won the other three.
The leader of Yabloko, a small pro-Western party, Sergei Mitrokhin, said he would lodge a formal complaint in order to obtain the cancellation of the elections.
In his polling station, Yabloko officially received zero votes, even though both he and his wife voted for the party. Independent electoral observers Golos claimed there was ballot stuffing, impersonation and biased campaigns in many parts of Russia and warned the country could soon revert to a Soviet-style society, wrote Reuters.
Though the election was obviously rigged, there was no reaction of any kind, apart from a few feeble complaints on the part of some opposition parties.
People are passive because they feel that there is absolutely no opportunity to change the system, Andrei Gerasimov, a Russian blogger told The New York Times.
As such, very few bother to actually vote.
In Moscow, 36% of voters officially participated, though the actual figure is most likely closer to 22%. The invisible 14%, needless to say, all voted for United Russia.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, for his part, was appalled, this is a complete failure of political strategists, who were guided by the utterly worthless principle that 'it doesn't matter how the people vote; what matters is how we count.' In everyone's eyes, the elections turned into a mockery of the people and showed a deep disrespect for their voices. The party of power gained the result it needed by discrediting political institutions and the very party itself, he declared after the election
The Putin strategy, since 2000, of concentrating power in the Kremlin, and marginalizing and demoralizing the opposition has clearly succeeded.
However, it has also led to the complete demobilization of the Russian people. They no longer participate, because the system does not need them. One recent poll indicated that 94 percent of respondents believed that they could not influence events in Russia. According to another, 62 percent did not think that elections reflect the people’s will, wrote the NYT.
One can safely say that the word democracy has ceased to have any meaning at all in Russia today.
Yet, what is even more worrisome is that those who believe in the rule of law, in justice and democracy and actively and publicly promote these values are in danger, and sooner or later will be killed.
That is the kind of country Russia has become, one where thugs rule, and intimidation and violence are the most potent and effective forms of expression.
Those who refuse to resort to such vile means are ignored and gunned down if they become too officious.
Maksharip Aushev, who died at the age of 43, knew that his life was in danger. All activists in Russia know that, and that is why all those who refuse to be cowed into submission, and continue to fight for justice and democracy deserve not only our respect and admiration, but the vigorous support of Europe and the US as well.
Last September, he was nearly kidnapped.
In a recent interview, he claimed he had received very strong information that I was going to be killed. Yet, he refused to flee…
So, who killed him, and why did they do it?
Aushev had many enemies, particularly in former President Zyazikov’s entourage.
For Magomed Khazbiyev, an Ingush opposition leader, the answer is obvious, the blame lies with the government and Yevkurov -- first of all with President Yevkurov, and then former [Ingush] leaders, and other officials, right up to the Kremlin. It is the bandit government of this country and its bandit methods that are to blame for [Aushev's] murder, he declared.
Maksharip was a famous and well-respected person in the republic, President Yevkurov said on Sunday. He suspects that elements within the security apparatus may have committed the deed
Yesterday, in a significant gesture of respect, he went to the Aushev house to pay his condolences, and said he would lead the murder investigation himself…
In Medvedev and Putin’s Russia however, the assassins are never arrested, let alone tried.
No one is ever held accountable. The authorities have no use for human rights activists, independent journalists, those interested in truth and justice.
Only the laws that suit them are enforced, visibly.
You see how they kill journalists and human rights workers, it continues, and there is no real investigation into any of them. It hasn’t ended, and it won’t end, Magomed Mutsolgov, of the human rights organization Mashr, told the NYT.
Anna Politkovskaya, Magomed Yevloyev, Stanislas Markelov, Natalia Estemirova,
Zarema Sadulayeva and now Maksharip Aushev…
Who shall be next, Magomed Khazbiyev, for there will be another victim and another and another as long as the likes of MM Medvedev and Putin rule Russia.
Sadly, the new killing ... clearly shows an atmosphere of impunity in the North Caucasus. Civil activities, human rights and opposition activities have virtually become a form of suicide, Tatyana Lokshina told the Interfax news agency.
The Russians and their henchmen are meticulously eliminating the political opposition in the North Caucasus, those seeking justice and respect for human rights through legal channels, and civilized means.
The tragedy is that those demanding justice are now likely to resort to violence to achieve their goals.
Aushev’s death is a big loss because this man has shown that there can be another way besides violence, besides armed resistance, said Aleksandr Cherkasov, of the Russian human rights organization Memorial, which was recently awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament. There is a nonviolent way toward justice. He was a remarkable person, and it is a big loss for Ingushetia and the whole of Russia. Memorial mourns him.
That non-violent path is losing credibility, however.
Soon, the only opponents remaining will be the ones bearing guns and planting bombs.
That, obviously, is Russia’s strategy.
Insurgent violence will then justify and legitimize its own brutal counterinsurgency campaign.
Violence may then subside, but at what cost?
A semblance of peace may be restored, as in Kadyrov’s Chechnya, but justice, the rule of law, civil and human rights, democracy, all the trappings of a civilized society will have been destroyed in the process.
For that signal achievment we can thank Mr. Putin…
(the photograph of Maksharip Aushev's funeral is by Kazbek Bassayev/Reuters)
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