RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES
THREATENING AN ETHNIC MINORITY ORGANISATION
The authorities of the Republic of Mari El, Russian
Federation, are planning to sue leaders of Mari Ushem (The Mari Union),
the organisation of indigenous population, for speaking at a public
meeting and for an interview given to the Finnish television on Sunday,
August 14.
Under the orders of the Russian-dominated administration
of Mari El, a group of lawyers analysed video recordings made during
the meeting and concluded that the opinions expressed by speakers as
well as by those who gave the interview discredited the situation in
Mari El and slandered the local administration.
The meeting held on Sunday was to welcome the arriving
participants of the 10th International Congress of Finno-Ugric Studies,
held this time in the Mari capital, and to attract attention to the
interethnic problems in Mari El.
A couple
of hours before the beginning of the meeting, the area in front of the
Drama House in Yoshkar-Ola was blocked with road-building machinery
with motors working at full speed to prevent people from gathering and
speaking. The picture story of the meeting is on the web page http://www.mari.ee/rus/news/polit/2005/08/09.htm.
This June,
former head of the Zvenigorod district Mikhail Zherebtsov and lecturer
of the Pedagogical Institute Vsevolod Zaytsev were found guilty in libel
by the local court. It was their reward for having a conversation with
Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian ambassadors who visited Mari El.
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