Evidence of the shooting of a demonstration in Dagestan

On May 3, 2006, a press conference was held in Moscow, at which video materials were shown showing that the authorities shot down a peaceful demonstration in the Dokuzparinsky district of Dagestan on April 25, 2006.

Russian human rights activists demand that the Prosecutor General's Office bring to justice the perpetrators of the dispersal of the rally, and also declare their intention to undertake an independent investigation into the events.

According to human rights activists, police officers destroyed all video recordings of what happened on April 25, 2006 and confiscated mobile phones with cameras from participants in the events. Journalists were shown the only surviving video of the events. As Serker Shakhbanov, one of the participants in the press conference, said, there are people among the protesters who heard how the prosecutor and the deputy minister ordered to start shooting after they left the scene. When the rally was almost over, the riot police began to shoot - mostly in the air, but also fired to kill.

As Lev Ponomarev, executive director of the Movement For Human Rights, stressed, no actions were taken to disperse the crowd in more peaceful ways.

“For our part, we will do the same thing that we did in Blagoveshchensk ,” said, in particular, the chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a member of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation to promote the development of civil society institutions and human rights, Lyudmila Alekseeva. “I am sure that if we had not shouted about Blagoveshchensk to the whole world, mass beatings would have become the norm in our country. If we do not now raise a cry to the whole world about two dead and several wounded, we will have more executions. "

L. Ponomarev sent Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Vladimir Ustinov "a statement about the crimes of officials that led to the execution of a peaceful protest action on April 25", in which he calls for the creation of a special investigative team of the Prosecutor General's Office to investigate the causes and circumstances of the events in the Dokuzparinsky district and initiate a criminal case against those responsible.

Sources

• Lyudmila Alekseeva: "If we do not shout about what happened in Dagestan, there will be new executions" // IA REGNUM. 2006. May 3.
• Human rights activists showed footage of the dispersal of a demonstration in Dagestan // Polit.Ru. 2006. May 3.