Turn off the opposition

Another opposition website has been banned in Ingushetia. Last November, the Magassky District Court banned the websites Ingushetia Online and angusht.com, now Ingushetiyaru.org, the successor to Ingushetiya.ru, banned in 2008.

The republic's prosecutor's office reports that on the website Ingushetiyaru.org “information materials with signs of extremism have been repeatedly identified,” “public statements and deliberately false accusations against a person holding a government position in a constituent entity of the Russian Federation have been identified.” The law on extremism equates public, deliberately false accusations of extremism to a person holding a public office as extremism. The SOVA Information and Analytical Center believes that the reason for banning the site was the material “Appeal of the Mekh-Khel RPM to President Medvedev” published there in May last year. The material, banned in the same month by the Magas court, in particular, said that the head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, “in close connection with the security forces,” “committed open genocide against the Ingush people, under openly false accusations, shooting without trial or investigation, undermining, kidnapping innocent people” and that his entire policy “is aimed at disuniting the social forces of the republic, at pitting them against each other and with the population, at discrediting them.” The text has not been removed from the site.

SOVA states that declaring an entire site extremist because of one material is unlawful.

Kommersant, according to the site owner Magomed Khazbiev, reports that the reason could have been another material - a statement by Ingush oppositionists about summoning the head of Yevkurov to the Sharia court in connection with violations during the Duma elections, but in this text the accusation of a person holding a public position of extremism are not seen.