Section: Policy

Human rights activists and journalists complained Thursday that authorities were harassing people who opposed a referendum this weekend to merge the Ust-Ordynsky Buryat autonomous district with the Irkutsk region, and that they had imposed a ban on rallies.

<< From right, Khamaganov, Saidok and Alexei Simonov of Glasnost Defense Foundation at Thursday's news conference - Igor Tabakov / MT

"Journalists are not allowed to offer readers any kind of analysis concerning the merger, and people are not allowed to organize rallies to protest against it. Authorities are preventing any kind of discussion about this important event in our region," said Yevgeny Khamaganov, a journalist from Ulan-Ude, the capital of the nearby republic of Buryatia.

Khamaganov, who has written critical reports about the merger for the newspaper Inform Polis, said at a news conference in Moscow that police had summoned him last week and accused him of promoting extremism and racial intolerance and of being a terrorist.

Voters will decide Sunday on the proposed unification of Ust-Ordynsky Buryat and Irkutsk -- a merger that is in line with a Kremlin drive to consolidate its grip on the country and reduce the number of regions from the current 88 to between 30 and 50. The first two regions were merged last year.

Marina Saidok, a local human rights activist, said people had been forbidden from organizing rallies over an apparent fear that opposition to the merger would spread. In March, authorities prohibited the Tailagan Buddhist spring celebration, a prayer gathering of about 300 people, she said.

Authorities earlier this month seized leaflets urging people to vote against the unification and closed the publishing house that printed the leaflets, Khamaganov said.

Opponents of the merger fear an erosion of their cultural heritage. "The unification would further destroy our culture. Our traditions will disappear little by little," Dmitry Garmayev, a representative of the Buryat diaspora in Moscow, said at the news conference.

Buryats, who number 436,000, are the largest ethnic minority group in Siberia and are mainly concentrated in and around Buryatia.

Stalin carved Ust-Ordynsky Buryat out of the formerly unified Buratia republic. Today, the district is home to more than 50,000 ethnic Buryats among a population of 142,000. More than half of the population is ethnic Russian.

Critics said that if the region merges with Irkutsk, Buryats will account for only 5 percent of the population, and they will face pressure to further assimilate into Russian culture.

Proponents say the merger would provide economic benefits and save the state some money. Ust-Ordynsky's 2005 budget included about 1.5 billion rubles ($52 million) in federal subsidies -- a burden that would shift to Irkutsk.

Merger discussions began in 2002 and have stalled several times. The process was put on track last August when President Vladimir Putin named Alexander Tishanin, a little-known railroad executive, as Irkutsk governor. On the same day that Irkutsk's legislature confirmed Tishanin as governor, he promised a vote on the merger by mid-2006 and left for talks with Ust-Ordynsky Buryat Governor Valery Maleyev. Tishanin and Maleyev met with Putin in the Kremlin earlier this month, and the president agreed to boost financial aid to Irkutsk if the merger went through.