Section: Policy

The government of the Buryat Republic is against the autonomy of Cisbaikal Buryats.

Edition of propaganda materials against merger of Ust-Ordynski Buryat autonomous district and Irkutsk region withdrawn on April, 8, 2006 in Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Buryat republic. Printing house of the Buryat State Publishing Trust where the leaflets were printed was searched.

According to the Publishing Trust stuff members the inquiry is being hold by a Department on Counter-terrorism and Organised Crime of the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Buryatia. They also reported that the car from the printing house in which the materials were transported was shadowed.

Traffic policemen stopped the car with the alleged purpose of checking documents. Then appeared some officers in civvies who communicated to the people accompanying the load that suspects of a murder escaped in a similar car and commanded to follow them.

However when the car with the Publishing house workers was conveyed to the Department on counter terrorism and organised crime the murder was forgotten and 30 thousand leaflets meant for distribution in Ust-Orda and Irkutsk were confiscated.

The same day later Buryat Publishing Trust was searched. Shadowing was also detected after activists � authors and customers of the materials.

A print house worker Ayur Ayurzhanaev was called to questioning to the Department on Counter terrorism and Organised crime after publication in a Moscow newspaper "Gazeta" of a report about the incident.

Youth Human Rights Movement �Erkhe� is strongly concerned with the realization of a constitutional right to express and disseminate the opinion on the merger of regions being recognized by the government of the Buryat republic an organised crime or terrorism. It arouses even greater surprise in the light of a recent tendency in Russian internal policy to not recognize crimes committed by neo-Nazis against foreigners and non-Slavic citizens of Russia as having racist base and to consider them just mere hooligan acts.

A referendum on the merger of Ust-Ordynski Buryat autonomous district and Irkutsk region is going to take place on April, 16th . However a large part of the population in both regions has already voted beforehand by order of heads of local administrations, directors of enterprises and organisations.

Buryat intelligentsia and groups of activists living in and out of Ust-Ordynski district speak out sharply against the annihilation of the autonomy. They think that the merger of Ust-Ordynski Buryat autonomous district and Irkutsk region will have negative effect both on the preservation of the language and culture of western (Ust-Orda) Buryats and economic situation in the region.

For contact:
info@buryat-mongolia.info
+7 914 8447439

Additional information can be found at web sites:
Youth Human Rights Movement �Erkhe�: http://www.buryat-mongolia.info/

Site of the Buryat people: http://www.buryatia.org/