Magomed Yevloyev, who ran the influential news website www.ingushetiya.ru, died Sunday, August 31, according to prosecutors. It comes amid mounting concern of Christian missionaries and church leaders over Russian violence, and refugees, in the Caucasus region, BosNewsLife established.
Vladimir Markin, the prosecutor’s office spokesman, said in a published statement that "an incident" took place after Yevloyev was taken into a police car "resulting in a shooting injury to the head and he later died in hospital." A post on his site said suggested the shooting happened while he was detained by police after landing at the airport of the main town, Nazran.
Reports quoting local police said Yevloyev had tried to seize a policeman’s gun when he was being led to a vehicle. A shot was fired and Yevloyev was injured in the head. The reports could not be independently verified, but the Russian prosecutor’s office said an investigation into the death had been launched. Yevloyev’s website, one of the most visited for Ingush news, was a vocal critic of the region’s administration, and a thorn in the side of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, a former general of the Sovjet-era sercret service KGB.
SAME FLIGHT
The president was reportedly on the same flight as the website journalist. His website reported on alleged Russian security force brutality in Ingushetia, an impoverished province of some half a million people, mostly Muslims, which is now more turbulent than neighbouring Chechnya, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported.
Ingushetia borders Chechnya and has suffered from overflowing unrest. There is a low-level insurgency, with regular small-scale ambushes against police and soldiers. In June 2008, the Human Rights Watch group reportedly accused Russian security forces there of carrying out widespread human rights abuses. HRW said it had documented dozens of arbitrary detentions, disappearances, acts of torture and extra-judicial executions.
At least some of their reports were confirmed to BosNewsLife by the Caucasus Congres, a Georgia-based advocacy group. Its president, Baganding Barahoev, told BosNewsLife he was forced to flee Ingushetia several years ago and received political asylum in neighboring Georgia.
RUSSIAN ORDERS
He said he arrived in 2006 because as chief of the local tax authorities he refused to follow Russian orders to only employ Russians. "I saw no problem to hire members of the ethnic Georgian community for instance. However I soon understood that because of my opinion could I would soon face prison. I fled with my wife and children to Georgia."
He spoke with BosNewsLife earlier this month, while waiting in front of a Georgian checkpoint in the town of Zestaponi on the road to Gori, the birthplace of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, which was devastated by Russian bombardments in a brief war this month.
The conflict erupted early August after Georgian authorities attempted to retake control over the pro-Russian, breakaway region, of South Ossetia. Barahoev alleged that Russian operations in Georgia are part of a wider attempt by Moscow to become once again "a colonial power in the Caucausus region."
EVANGELICAL CHURCHES
Several evangelical churches in Georgia were also destroyed, said mission group Russian Ministries. Russia has denied wrongdoing, saying it only wants to defend local populations in Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
BosNewsLife established however that Russian forces are involved in setting up a bufferzone
between those areas and the rest of Georgia, leading to more concerns among missionaries and church leaders.
"My church in the village of Tacabomi, just outside Zestaponi, already deals with many new refugees from Gori," Orthodox Priest Georgij Kirkitadze told BosNewsLife. "We are often organizing a mis with them where we pray for peace and for those who suffer because of this conflict." The European Union was to discuss its response to the Russian actions Monday, September 1, and expected to take diplomatic steps aimed at isolating Russia.
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