The head of North Ossetia was accused of the fact that his brewery continues to work no matter what. He made a promise to the protesters that the enterprise would close on Tuesday.
Oleg Goryunov
Today in Vladikavkaz there is no one on Freedom Square - no protesters, no police, no Rosguard.
And the day before, the Ossetian unit of the Russian Guard refused to suppress an unauthorized rally. Guardsmen left Freedom Square to thunderous applause and exclamations “Well done!”, Passing right through the crowd and lowering their shields in solidarity with their people ...
About what happened in the Ossetian capital yesterday, about the explosive situation in this republic of the North Caucasus, which has been developing for 4 years, we will tell through the mouth of two people - men and women.
Both are prominent opposition figures in North Ossetia. Soslan Kochiev is an unemployed, former employee of one of the ministries, who was fired for criticizing the authorities on the personal order of Vyacheslav Bitarov . A father of three children attended a rally on Freedom Square yesterday:
“Most of the residents of Vladikavkaz didn’t come to the rally - we still have nothing, you can somehow live. Mostly people from the regions came to the rally - things are worse there now. Yes, there were a lot of drunk guys, mostly young people I personally stood in front of a line of bristling, - from the word shield, and not from the word anger, the police, and called everyone to calm. The tension was great. There were three slogans:
1. The resignation of Bitarov
2. The resignation of the government
3. Direct elections - we do not need appointees. "
The second interlocutor of "NI" was the independent journalist Madina Sageeva, she did not go to the rally:
“This rally was being prepared for about three weeks, about 3 thousand people were openly expressing its willingness to participate in it. I spoke out against this: I considered a massive violation of the self-isolation regime a crime worthy of punishment. But today I changed my mind because I saw people at the rally who really already have nothing to feed their children with. For four years of the republic’s reign, ex-businessman Vyacheslav Bitarov, unless, of course, transferring the business to his son can be considered as leaving the business, our people once elilsya a very rich and very poor. And if tomorrow was a new gathering of the hungry, I go to a rally to support them. I realized that they were going yesterday to demand justice people who have failed, have no future and prospects. "
Why did human rights activist Soslan Kochiev, the father of three young children, go to the rally, because, as practice has shown in recent years, especially the Moscow history of dispersing peaceful demonstrations, is this an unsafe matter?
The wife, according to Soslan, had nothing against, besides he had good reasons for this:
“You understand, in our republic for three years there has not been a single, truly popular rally. The SB government has accepted its position on holding mass events, as a result, in Vladikavkaz, a special platform was allocated on the outskirts of the city, it was fenced. We, Ossetians, once called this place "skotobaza." I wrote a complaint to the Prosecutor General's Office and the Constitutional court later found my remark is true, and canceled bitarovsky law on rallies. Now m s have the right to assemble wherever and whenever you want. That is a splash of popular anger accumulated for a long time, and yesterday it happened. "
Ossetians say that the belief that there is no coronavirus, ascribed to yesterday’s rally participants by state media, is a blatant lie. The threat of hunger and lack of money brought people outside.
“If we hadn’t introduced a regime of self-isolation, already yesterday Bitarov would not have been in power - the whole of Vladikavkaz, all of Ossetia would have gone out. Why did the Ossetians come out first? It's very simple - where it breaks thinly - Bitarova kills that he himself gave birth to. He tried to rely on the theme of patriotism and rural children, giving them handouts, but they still had nothing, but today they have a pure soul. Bitarov said to the poor 4 years ago: "Go home to save - he called them into politics - so they went into politics - to Freedom Square. "
According to Madina, at the rally yesterday there were absolutely not those slogans about which an eyewitness of events told us - Soslan Kochiev, only the number of demands of the Ossetian people for those in power coincides - the number three:
1. Release Vadim Cheldiev, organizer of a rally arrested for two months
2. To send V. Bitarov to resign
3. Feed the people
“The call to feed people sounded yesterday on the square, oddly enough, quieter than the rest. The fact is that the crowd was beheaded at the very beginning of the confrontation - leaders were arrested on the way to Freedom Square. Now they’re talking about the need for direct assistance the poor, the number of which is growing every day in our country. And do you know that in North Ossetia we started helping people before all other regions? Only good work turned out to be VERY bad! The reason for this is the system built by Bit Arov in the republic - to hire only their own, according to the blat, as they used to say. Such people were in the social protection system. In "peacetime" - that is, before the coronavirus, some aunt phoned his acquaintance’s social network and asked: " I would like a child to send somewhere for a free ticket. "They say to her:" Collect information, send it, "and they sent it. So, year after year, more and more people who do not need any kind of social assistance appeared in the lists of needy - they are all thieves. And when trouble happened, food began to be delivered according to these lists, three, four times in the same house. But people see everything ... About a day before the confrontation, they only thought that the lists of those in need were left. The truly poor, who already had nothing at all, called social security, asked for help, and they were told that they were not on the list ... Can you imagine what kind of popular anger began to appear in society? Only a day before the rally, they began delivering buckwheat, butter and flour according to new lists, so that the volunteers themselves began to make up. My friend, the day before yesterday, was delivering food to the already poor, she called me later and said: “What a sad flight! I saw really poor people!” Madina Sageeva said in an interview with NI.
In addition to the impoverishment of the main part of the population of North Ossetia, Soslan Kochiev sees several other reasons for the unrest in the most “quiet” North Caucasian republic, for example, an increased sense of justice among Ossetians:
“What do we see? People came to power 4 years ago, who did not and still do not even have an idea of the civil service, who do not feel responsibility for the decisions made, and they cannot really make decisions. See: March 18 Bitarov announces a regime of self-isolation, and on March 21 drives people to a mass event in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Victory - tree planting ... An interesting fact is that as soon as the people in the square started shouting “Beetar, come out,” yesterday, Bitarov came out, but there’s no dialogue It happened. He stood for 1.5 hours in the square, shouting: "I can’t hear anything!" This is despite the fact that in the government building, I know that I worked in it, there is a sound system, you could assemble it in 20 minutes and talk with people, but no, what happened yesterday is not a meeting with the people - it's clowning. "
Soslan claims that the regime of self-isolation lasted only one week in North Ossetia. Exactly a week later, people who mainly depend on small businesses began to open shops, go out into the street. Recently, they began to be fined 30 thousand rubles (the average salary in CO for two months - approx. The author of the article).
“You know, I witnessed such an incident: the local Rosgvardiya tried to“ cut ”the crowd with a wedge, and then stones and tiles flew into the Rosgvardey’s, which they didn’t have time to replace on Freedom Square, and, like a hundred years ago, it became “a tool of the proletariat.” Young people arranged a rockfall, and we started shouting to them: “Don’t throw stones!”, but where is it. One of the guardsmen hit a huge piece of tile right in the head, it collapsed like a mowed man, I thought he never "he won’t get up, but he jumped to his feet, took his place among the attackers."
According to police in Vladikavkaz, 69 people were detained on Monday. The organizer of the protest - Vadim Cheldiev, arrested for two months, went on a hunger strike.
PS
On the Internet now you can find a video of yesterday’s unrest in Vladikavkaz, shot from the building of the government of the Republic of SB, it clearly distinguishes a female voice, apparently, of one of the civil servants. This person, removing the revolt of the Ossetian poor, tirelessly repeats: "Cattle, cattle! .."
BTW
A North Ossetian resident, opera singer Vadim Cheldiev, who is suspected of spreading false information about coronavirus, was arrested for using violence against a government official. Batradz Kulchiev, the lawyer of Cheldiev, announced the arrest, this information was confirmed in the Supreme Court of the republic.
"He was detained under part 1 of article 318 - the use of violence against a representative of the authorities. He does not agree with this decision, while he is ready to be responsible for all his actions that he committed," said the lawyer, noting that they chose a preventive measure on Monday, TASS reports.
A protest rally in Vladikavkaz against the regime of self-isolation was illegal. This was indicated on Tuesday by presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov.
"In any case, this action was illegal," said Peskov.
He also noted that these protests can have negative consequences from an epidemiological point of view. “Still, people came together, clearly not observing any social distances. In this regard, this may after some days have negative consequences. This is obvious to everyone,” the spokesman for the Russian president said.
Peskov refused to evaluate protests, since this is not part of his function. "It is obvious that the local leadership will have to discuss this with the initiative group. If I'm not mistaken, the initiative group is still defined there," he said.
tj