And they shoot too

On November 22, an attempt was made on the life of the editor-in-chief of the Ingush newspaper Serdalo, Khusein Shadiev - his car was fired upon, and Shadiev was wounded in the shoulder blade. According to Bers Evloev, acting press secretary of the head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, “this is probably the first time that an attack has been made on local journalists.” Shadiev has already been operated on; his life is not in danger.

It should be noted that on August 31, 2008, in Ingushetia, Magomed Evloev, the former owner of the opposition website Ingushetiya.Ru, was killed under mysterious circumstances. It cannot be said that this completely contradicts the words of Bers Evloev - at that time Magomed Evloev was not formally a journalist. In addition, the cause of his death was not an assassination attempt: for unknown reasons, he was detained at Magas airport, and then allegedly accidentally shot dead in a police car. But in any case, it is difficult to say that nothing has threatened journalists in Ingushetia so far.

Unlike Ingushetiya.Ru, Serdalo is a government publication. According to deputy editor-in-chief Yakub Sultygov, the reason for the assassination attempt was articles about corruption. The newspaper, as part of the anti-corruption campaign announced by Yevkurov, wrote about specific facts uncovered by law enforcement agencies (they, as Sultygov admitted to Kommersant, did not conduct their own investigations), “and someone might not like it.”