Circassians Fear Adygeya May Become The Next Nalchik
The 400-plus participants at the congress on June 27 in Maykop of the
Circassian public movement Adyghe Khase (Circassian Council) expressed
their shared concern at ongoing trends that they fear pose a threat.
Specifically, they fear that ongoing police reprisals against young
Muslims in towns close to the administrative border with Krasnodar Krai
could drive some of the victims to join the Islamic underground.
Khazret Chemso, a member of Adyghe Khase's council, described
to the congress how groups of between 10-15 police officers force their
way into the homes of practicing Muslims early in the morning and "turn
everything upside down" in their search for incriminating objects such
as weapons or drugs. Alternatively, they intercept young men as they
leave the mosque, force them to lie face down on the ground, search
them, and then let them go.
Asked to comment on the situation,
Adyghe Khase Chairman Arambiy Khapay said that no one should be
persecuted for his faith. He said that at present there are no grounds
for the development in the republic of "aggressive forms of Islam. We
are not Chechnya, or Ingushetia, or Daghestan."
At the same time, he warned that unless such harassment ceases, Adygeya could be the target of an attack
by Islamic militants comparable to that on the Kabardino-Balkaria
capital, Nalchik, in October 2005. Most of the young fighters who took
part in that attack had similarly been subjected to arbitrary
harassment and violence by the police.
The congress approved
unanimously a proposal to convene a roundtable discussion of police
persecution of young Muslims. The republican government, Interior
Ministry, prosecutor's office, and the presidential administration will
be invited to participate.
A second key issue debated at the
June 27 congress was the all-Russian census to take place in October
2010. Khapay said Adyghe Khase's council has already adopted a
resolution recommending that Adygeya's Circassians designate their
nationality in the census questionnaire both as Circassian, and by the
ethnonym Adyg. He had told kavkaz-uzel.ru earlier that the
Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkessia chapters of Adyghe Khase
will issue analogous recommendations to the Circassian population of
those two republics.
The congress also adopted an appeal to
the leaders of Adygeya, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachayevo-Cherkessia
to revive the Parliamentary Assembly that comprised representatives
from all three republics.
It is not clear whether and in what
detail the congress discussed the proposal discussed at the Congress of
the Circassian People in Cherkessk last November to redraw internal
borders within the Russian Federation to create a Circassian republic
that would comprise the regions of the North Caucasus where Circassians
live compactly. Adygeya's Circassians, who account for around 24
percent of the republic's population of around 450,000, are in favor of
creating such a republic. Khapay said at the congress last November
that he sees "no alternative" to doing so.
But Circassians in
Kabardino-Balkaria, who are the largest ethnic group within that
republic (55 percent), profess to be perfectly content with the status
quo. A session in Nalchik on June 5 of the Kabardino-Balkaria chapter
of Adyghe Khase again formally rejected the idea of a unified
Circassian republic.
Meeting with Khapay and other prominent
Adyghe Khase leaders on the eve of last week's congress, Adygeya
President Aslancheryy Tkhakushinov stressed
that "we have an interest in the activities of Adyghe Khase remaining a
positive consolidating force" in dialogue between ethnic groups. In
other words, don't rock the boat.
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