400 Students from the Caucasus Arrested and Abused in Moscow
From the site Kavkaz.Realii, December 17, 2018:
“400 students of the Sergo Ordzhonokidze State Geological Exploratory University were detained by the Russian National Guard. According to the site URA.ru, the representatives of the North Caucasus had established “their own rules” in the dormitory.”
However, what this means was never clarified.
“Russian soldiers began a passport purge and verification. Students from Ingushetia had established their own rules—“whoever is not with us is beneath us”—and were openly carrying weapons came to their attention.”
Authorities pointed to a note the claimed to have found, although the phrase “whoever is not with us is beneath us” was not in it.
The following day, the Ingush students announced they were filing a complaint with the Russian Investigative Committee, claiming that the Russian soldiers beat them. According to student Zaur Khashiev: “men in masks burst into the room, shouted “FSB”, immediately hit his brother, knocked him off his feet, forced everyone to lie face down on the floor, and began to beat them in the head and body with rubber hammers, kicked them in the kidneys, and electrically shocked them in the groin.”
An attorney for the State claimed that there were no “detentions,” just an orderly passport verification.
Of course, this is all reminiscent of the abuse of Chechen students in Moscow as described by Anna Politkovskaya in her 2003 book A Small Corner of Hell. I suppose this action is in response to Ingush protests over the transfer of parts of Ingushetia to Chechnya.
The strategy of beating a minority group down until they finally succumb or, in Putin’s dreams, assimilate, has been shown to be pretty ineffective and often has the opposite effect. It will be interesting to see how this story develops.