Police disperse protesting villagers in Russia’s Dagestan

DAGESTAN, 27 June, Caucasus Times – An unauthorized protest by Chechen villagers in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan on 26 June was dispersed by police officers.

The Caucasus Times quoted a police officer at the Dagestani Interior Ministry as saying that the protesters, who were forced to leave their homes in the village of Borozdinovskaya in Chechnya in 2005, had gathered in the Dagestani town of Kizlyar and demanded information about their 11
co-villagers, who have been missing since 4 June 2005. They also demanded plots of land and compensation for their houses and property.

One of the protesters, Ravzanat Uvaysova, told the Caucasus Times that several groups of police officers wielding truncheons had forced them out of the park where the protest was being held.

A so-called “clearance operation” was organized in Borozdinovskaya on 4 June 2005. One person was killed, 11 went missing and four houses were razed to the ground. Nothing is known about the fate of the missing villagers. Subsequently, ethnic Avars, natives of Dagestan’s Tsuntinskiy and Tsumadinskiy districts, left the village and set up the Nadezhda camp in
Dagestan’s Kizlyarskiy District. About 100 of the 800 refugees are living in the camp, while others are scattered across the villages of Kizlyarskiy District.

Diana Malbahova, Mahachkala, Caucasus Times

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