Human rights defenders call on Kokov to stop attacks on Institute for Humanitarian Studies

Human rights defenders from Kabardino-Balkaria report that the police conducted searches at places of residence of some employees of the Kabardino-Balkarian Institute for Humanitarian Studies, and a campaign is being launched against them on social media. The human rights defenders have called on the leader of the republic to prevent persecution of scientists who try to recreate the true history and defend the native languages of the peoples of Northern Caucasus.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that during six years, a group of scientists from the Kabardino-Balkarian Institute for Humanitarian Research has been working on the Great Russian-Kabardino-Circassian Dictionary, which includes 75,000 words and expressions.

A group of human rights defenders and artists made public an appeal to Kazbek Kokov, the leader of Kabardino-Balkaria, in connection with pressure on the Institute for Humanitarian Studies of the Kabardino-Balkarian Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

According to the human rights defenders’ appeal, “slanderous articles” about the employees of the Kabardino-Balkarian Institute for Humanitarian Studies appear on social media. The release of materials “have coincided with searches conducted by FSB officers in the apartments of the scientists from the Institute for Humanitarian Research of the Kabardino-Balkarian Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) on November 11.”

The searches have been carried out at the homes of Doctors of Sciences in Philology Alkhasov and Khaukasheva and Candidates of Historical Sciences Taziev and Aloev.

“It is obvious to us that behind those illegal actions there is a task to close the oldest national institute under any pretext in order to eliminate the only source of scientific reflection of the history, language, national culture ... of the peoples of Northern Caucasus,” the appeal says.

Its authors called on Kazbek Kokov to prevent “illegal persecution by the law enforcement bodies of employees of the Kabardino-Balkarian Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences.”