 |
|
|
|
// Republics
// Adygea, Republic of >>
// Altai (Gorno-Altai), Republic of >>
// Bashkortostan, Republic of >>
// Buryatia, Republic of >>
// Chechnya, Republic of >>
// Chuvashia, Republic of >>
// Dagestan, Republic of >>
// Ingushetia, Republic of
// Kabardino-Balkaria, Republic of >>
// Kalmykia, Republic of >>
// Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Republic of >>
// Karelia, Republic of >>
// Khakassia, Republic of >>
// Komi, Republic of >>
// Mari El, Republic of >>
// Mordovia, Republic of >>
// North Ossetia, Republic of >>
// Sakha (Yakutia), Republic of >>
// Tatarstan, Republic of >>
// Tuva, Republic of >>
// Udmurtia, Republic of >>
// Territories (Krai)
// Altai Territory >>
// Khabarovsk Territory >>
// Krasnodar Territory >>
// Krasnoyarsk Territory >>
// Primorye (Maritime) Territory >>
// Stavropol Territory >>
// Regions
// Amur Region >>
// Arkhangelsk Region >>
// Astrakhan Region >>
// Belgorod Region >>
// Bryansk Region >>
// Chelyabinsk Region >>
// Chita Region >>
// Irkutsk Region >>
// Ivanovo Region >>
// Kaliningrad Region >>
// Kaluga Region >>
// Kamchatka Region >>
// Kemerovo Region >>
// Kirov Region >>
// Kostroma Region >>
// Kurgan Region >>
// Kursk Region >>
// Leningrad Region >>
// Lipetsk Region >>
// Magadan Region >>
// Moscow Region >>
// Murmansk Region >>
// Nizhny Novgorod Region >>
// Novgorod Region >>
// Novosibirsk Region >>
// Omsk Region >>
// Orel Region >>
// Orenburg Region >>
// Penza Region >>
// Perm Region >>
// Pskov Region >>
// Rostov Region >>
// Ryazan Region >>
// Sakhalin Region >>
// Samara Region >>
// Saratov Region >>
// Smolensk Region >>
// Sverdlovsk Region >>
// Tambov Region >>
// Tomsk Region >>
// Tula Region >>
// Tver Region >>
// Tyumen Region >>
// Ulyanovsk Region >>
// Vladimir Region >>
// Volgograd Region >>
// Vologda Region >>
// Voronezh Region >>
// Yaroslavl Region >>
// Federal Cities
// Moscow >>
// St. Petersburg >>
// Autonomous Areas (Okrugs)
// Agin-Buryatia Autonomous Area >>
// Chukotka Autonomous Area >>
// Evenk Autonomous Area >>
// Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area >>
// Komi-Permyak Autonomous Area >>
// Koryak Autonomous Area >>
// Nenets Autonomous Area >>
// Taimyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Area >>
// Ust-Ordynsky Buryat Autonomous Area >>
// Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area >>
// Autonomous Regions
// Jewish Autonomous Region >>
|
|
|
|
The Kremlin Rejects Ingushetian Territorial Rehabilitation
// At the hands of the Constitutional Court
Friendship of the Nations
Ingushetia and North Ossetia are on the brink of a new conflict. Kommersant has learned that the parliament of Ingushetia has appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to defend the law “On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples,” which the Ossetians want reconsidered. The parliament of North Ossetia has sent an enquiry to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation on the constitutionality of two clauses of the law that guarantee repressed peoples territorial rehabilitation. According to information obtained by Kommersant, the Kremlin has sided with the Ossetians, holding that the boundaries between the subjects of the Federation cannot under any circumstances be altered.
This latest scandal arose when the North Ossetian newspaper Ossetia: A Free View published the transcription of the conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Mothers of Beslan in its September 8 edition. Putin met with the mothers on September 2, and that transcript can also be found in the September 15 edition of the Moscow Novaya gazeta. In the course of that conversation, Azamat Sabanov allegedly said to the president, “As long as the notorious law On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples' exists, there is a reason and, to some degree, a source for that bloodshed. Can an end be put to that sometime? Annul the article 6 of that law?” “We are working on that question,” Putin' answer is quoted in the newspaper. “Kozak [presidential representative in the Southern Federal District Dmitry Kozak] has reported to me that the issue will be normalized within the next month. The case is in the Constitutional Court. So that problem should be removed. Unfortunately, it was passed improperly in its time, now we have to face the consequences.”
Neither publication of the transcription by guaranteed to be accurate, since both were reconstructed from the oral recollections of participants in the conversation. “That question was undoubtedly discussed in the conversation,” Nina Eranosova, editor-in-chief of Ossetia: A Free View told Kommersant. “But the word transcription' was not used by us. It was used on the site Ingushetia.ru, causing an immediate scandal.” She recounted that Sabanov approached the newspaper, asking it to make a correction saying that he “did not ask that question and does not remember what he discussed at that meeting.” That statement was printed in the September 17 edition of the paper.
The Kremlin would neither confirm nor deny that Putin promised to change the law on the rehabilitation of repressed peoples. A member of the Mothers of Beslan Committee, who wished to remain anonymous, told Kommersant that the question was asked, but by Mairbek Tuaev, not Sabanov. “They just decided not to worsen the already tense relations between the two republics, so they asked them to print a retraction.”
The president had his reasons to make such a promise. Kommersant has learned that, on August 9, the parliament of North Ossetia sent an enquiry to the Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of articles 3 and 6 of the law “On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples.” Article 3 states in part that “the rehabilitation of repressed peoples signifies that the admission and implementation of their rights to restoration of territorial integrity as it existed before the anticonstitutional policy of forced reassignment of borders.” Article 6 clarifies that territorial rehabilitation is envisaged as the implementation on the basis of the will of repressed peoples “legal and organizational measures to restore national territorial borders.”
The authors of the enquiry state in regard to those clauses that, under articles 67 and 102 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, “borders between subjects can be changed with mutual agreement,” but not at the will of repressed peoples.
Yesterday, First Deputy Speaker of the North Ossetian parliament Stanislav Kesaev confirmed for Kommersant that the enquiry had been sent to the Constitutional Court, but he refused to make any comments. “There is an article in that law that preconditions various conflicts in the North Caucasus. I suggest that a moratorium be imposed on it for the next 50 years. Article 6 of that law was a serious detonator for bloody conflict in the 1990s,” North Ossetian Minister for Ethnic Affairs Taimuraz Kesaev told Kommersant.
The Prigorodny District, which was part of the Checheno-Ingushetia populated predominantly by Ingush, was made part of North Ossetia in 1944, when the Ingush were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia. In 1991, the Supreme Council of Russia passed the law “On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples,” which gave Ingushetia the right to demand the return of the territory it lost. In October 1992, an armed conflict broke out between Ossetians and Ingush in Prigorodny District. Federal troops had to be brought in to restore peace. North Ossetia and Ingushetia subsequently signed several peace agreements, but the return of the Ingush refugees who fled that district during the conflict is still not complete.
The enquiry, which was sent under conditions of extreme secrecy, has not yet been accepted for consideration. Nonetheless, the reaction was sharp when word of plans to reconsider the law reached Ingushetia. The parliament of Ingushetia sent an appeal to Putin asking him to defend the law from incursion by the neighboring republic. “It is a demand to reconsider the law of our people, who have suffered for many generations,” Ingushetian President Murat Zyazikov told Kommersant. “What do they want? For me to send those unhappy refugees back to Kazakhstan?” Deputy Speaker of the Ingushetian parliament Magomed Tatriev was spoke even more bluntly. “If that law is reconsidered, the situation will explode not only in Ingushetia, but in all the North Caucasus,” he told Kommersant.
Fedor Shcherbakov, press secretary for presidential representative Kozak told Kommersant that “there is a whole package of amendments and recommendations to laws, possibly including the law on rehabilitation.” A source in his office, when asked by Kommersant if it wouldn't be better for avoiding scandal to discuss the issue publicly, answered, “There will be a scandal in any case.” The newspaper also has information that Kozak is sympathetic to the Ossetians as well and has told authorities from both republics at a meeting with regional officials that there will be no changes in territorial borders.
by
Musa Muradov; Zaur Farniev, Vladikavkaz; Diana Dadasheva, Rostov-on-Don
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 23, 2005
|
|
|
