Nazran/Agency Caucasus – A group of Ingush official were shocked at what they saw in the town of Mayski, where they went to see the extremely bad conditions of living available to the Ingush refugees who had been forced 15 years ago to leave their homes in the Prigorodni province along the border to North Ossetia.
Ruslan Albakov-Mirshi, Chairman of the Center for History-Culture of Ingushetiya; Ramzan Ugurchiyev, Chairman of the Association of Ingush Students, and other 19 officials formed a group of visitors who went in November to Mayski.
Albakov-Miarshi said that the refugees faced a huge challenge of survival in inhumane conditions. "The needy refugees have only hovels to live in. It would have been difficult to think that such a thing existed in the 21th century if we had not seen it ourselves. We only spent 20 minutes in the hovels and my feet were extremely cold, and the winter has just begun. They sleep on mattresses laid directly down on the ground. I fear that they will soon show signs of serious illness. Plus, the federal administration tends to ignore demands for restitution of the rights that were taken away from them in the war of 1992. That is, the administration does nothing to help them return home and have their possessions back."
Besides, Ugurchiyev said that there was always disregard for the difficulties facing the refugees. " We as students wanted first to see with our own eyes the bad conditions of living in Mayski and then to help them out a little bit. We gave the needy people stoves and lodges. The students of Ingushetia are collecting money to buy more lodges and tents. I have, however, serious doubts that permission will ever be granted to have tents built in Mayski. For some strange reason, the Ossetian administration is not allowing them to built tents. We will, however, take our chance anyway. People are living in really bad conditions in Mayski–to be more precise, they are not living; they are surviving. This cannot be called living. These people have to wait mattresses to dry out every day, because they get wet over the night. I don’t think that the Russian President Vladimir Putin was informed of these conditions of living. He wanted the problem to get solved; but in fact nobody is doing anything to solve it."
İNGSHT/ÖZ/FT
