The Ingush Minister asked to initiate a criminal case against a journalist because of an article about deportation
Moscow. 5 May. INTERFAX.RU – Minister for External Relations, National Policy, Press and Information of Ingushetia Ulan Evloev appealed to the Prosecutor General of Russia to consider the issue of criminal responsibility of journalist Andrei Apalin in connection with the publication of an article about the Ingush people inciting ethnic strife.
“The head of the Minnats of the Republic, Ulan Yevloyev, sent a letter to Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika with a request to take prosecutorial measures against Andrei Apalin on the fact of inciting ethnic hatred,” Yevloyev quoted in his press service.
According to the minister, the article by Apalina entitled “The Ingush must thank Stalin for the deportation and put him monuments”, published in the Petersburg newspaper, contains insults and baseless accusations against the entire Ingush people. He noted that “the denial or rehabilitation of the crimes of the Stalin regime is not just a falsification of historical facts, but also represents a direct and clear threat to the stable development of the state and society.”
The existence of a federal law on criminal prosecution of persons who deny the deportation of peoples and justify the Stalinist genocide, which clearly spelled out the responsibility of citizens for such statements, including dismissal from educational institutions, deprivation of academic titles and other merits, would not allow the deportees to be insulted and humiliated peoples, says Yevloev.
As reported, in February, the Ingush parliament’s deputies in the first reading unanimously adopted a draft law imposing a ban on the perpetuation of the memory of Stalin in the region. It is not only a ban on the installation of busts and monuments, but also on assigning it a name to settlements, streets, publicly justifying its activities, placing its image in public places and in administrative premises.
In the explanatory note to the draft law it is noted that Stalin exercised direct leadership during political repression.
February 23, 2017 marked the 73th anniversary of the deportation of the Ingush and Chechen peoples. On this day, 91 thousand. 250 Ingush were sent to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. In exile from hunger, cold and disease, almost half of the population died. A number of other peoples of the North Caucasus were also deported. In 1957, the repressed peoples, including the Ingush, were rehabilitated. The prosecutor’s office of the republic gave a negative opinion on this bill. Despite this, the deputies of the National Assembly did not remove this draft republican law from the agenda, saying that over time they hope to adopt the law in the next two readings and are ready to defend it in court.
