Russia Profile
October 27, 2009
The Price of Patriotism
The Murder of an Activist Who Saw Criticism of Authorities as a Part of Citizenship Is a Blow to Both Civil Society and Yunus-bek Yevkurov’s Credibility
By Roland Oliphant
Maksharip Aushev, the Ingush opposition figure and human rights activist murdered on Sunday, was buried yesterday in his ancestral cemetery in the village of Surkhakhi. Aushev’s associates insist that his murder was connected to his human rights and political activism. But although he had been a strong critic of former President Murat Zyazikov, he officially retired from political activism when Yunus-bek Yevkurov was appointed president of the republic in the fall of 2008.
Aushev was killed on Sunday morning as he drove through the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria on the Kavkaz Federal Highway. The details are hazy, but it seems that gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons from an overtaking car. Aushev died immediately. His 29-year-old cousin, traveling in the passenger seat, was gravely wounded.
He was obviously in danger. Before he died he claimed to have narrowly avoided an attempted kidnapping on September 17. And when it comes to a motive, the investigators are spoilt for choice. Aushev was not only a prominent human rights activist, but an opposition politician and a successful businessman. By Monday investigators had announced they were looking into five possible reasons, including his commercial affairs, links to organized crime, and the “murder of rioters in Nazran at the end of 2007.” His associates, however, are pointing to his involvement in human rights work, nodding in the direction of the security services.
Aushev’s murder is at least the fifth of a public activist from the region this year. In January, Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer involved in several Chechen human rights cases, was shot in Moscow. In July, Natalia Estemirova, the Chechnya representative of the Human rights group Memorial, was abducted outside her flat, shot, and dumped by the roadside over the border in Ingushetia. Then in August, the bodies of Zerema Sadulayeva and Alik Dzhabrailov, who ran a children’s charity in Chechnya, were found in the trunk of their car. They had both been shot.
Aushev’s murder confirms the inevitable risks involved in taking part in public life in the North Caucasus. “Being an independent activist in the North Caucasus is simply suicidal,” said Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch.
Aushev was not a human rights activist “to the bone,” as friends described Estemirova. His initiation into activism came only in 2007, when his son and nephew were abducted, apparently by members of the security services. Aushev’s response was to organize a public protest in Nazran, whose participants declared that they would not return home until the children were released.
It worked – the children were released the same day – but probably only because he was “an influential man,” noted Lokshina. From then on, his involvement in human rights was largely motivated by helping families of kidnapping victims who did not have his kind of leverage.
Separating Aushev’s human rights work from his political activism is tricky - his advocacy of human rights issues, especially on abductions, certainly “made him part of the human rights club,” said Lokshina. But it was always linked to his political agenda, particularly calls for the resignation of then Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, whom he accused of running a “criminal regime steeped in the killings of thousands of Ingush.”
In the course of his opposition activities Aushev became a close associate of Magomed Yevloyev, the editor of the opposition Web site Ingushetia.ru. When Yevloyev was killed in police custody (“accidentally” shot in the head, according to the police) on August 31 last year, Aushev agreed to take over control of the Web site. But he was not there long. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev finally removed Zyazikov in October, and Aushev resigned from his post at the publication on November 4. “I campaigned for a change of power in the republic,” he said in a statement at the time. “That has happened, so I am ending my public activities and will be involved in business.”
President Yevkurov himself told the Echo of Moscow Radio station that the murder of Aushev was both an attack on himself and an attempt to destabilize the republic. And that isn’t just political bombast. Aushev’s decision to retire from political life epitomized the high expectations placed on Yevkurov, and his murder – especially if it turns out that security services were involved - is a blow to the new president’s credibility.
Human rights groups are still inclined to give Yevkurov their backing. “We are confident that he has a lot of goodwill,” said Lokshina. “The problem is that he does not have sufficient capability.” But ending human rights abuses by the security services has been as hard as tackling the insurgency the Kremlin hoped that Yevkurov could end. Rather than reigning in the violence, Yevkurov’s first summer as president saw a surge in terrorist attacks, one of which put him in the hospital for several months. Yevkurov will need similar patience from both the Ingush public and the federal government if he is to survive.
In the given situation, the implications of the murders of moderates like Aushev goes way beyond the tragedy of a single death, argued Sergei Markedonov, the head of the Interethnic Relations Department at the Institute of Political and Military Analysis in Moscow. “Loyalty to Russia was a very important point for Aushev,” he said. “He didn’t play into Islamist propaganda, or even into criticism of Russia emanating from the West. He was a citizen who was dissatisfied with the authorities, but criticized them within the framework of the law. And when you kill bright figures like that – like Aushev, Yevloyev, and Natalia Estemirova in Chechnya - you leave only those who don’t see Russia as their own country.”
