INGUSH PRESIDENT NOMINATED FOR NOBEL PRIZE.

INGUSH PRESIDENT NOMINATED FOR NOBEL PRIZE.

The organization “Common Action,” which was founded in 1997 at the initiative of Yelena Bonner, the widow of Andrei Sakharov, has sent an open letter, dated July 2001, to Gumer Bruger, chairman of the Subcommittee for Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize, nominating President Ruslan Aushev of Ingushetia for the prize. “De facto the sole region of Russia accepting forced migrants from Chechnya,” the authors wrote, “turned out to be the Republic of Ingushetia. ‘This is my people! Let them all in!’ Aushev said to federal soldiers at the ‘Kavkaz’ checkpoint.” Among the thirty-one individuals signing the letter were: Lyudmila Alekseyeva, President of the International Helsinki Federation; Yelena Bonner; Svetlana Gannushkina; chairwoman of the “Civil Assistance” Committee; Lidiya Grafova, chairwoman of the Executive Committee of the “Forum of Migrant Organizations”; Sergei Grigoryants, president of the Glasnost’ Foundation; Tat’yana Kasatkina, head of the “Memorial” Human Rights Center; Mariya Kirbasova, chairwoman of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia; Lev Ponomarev, chairman of the Movement “For Human Rights”; and Anatoly Pristavkin, writer and member of the Commission on Pardons of the President of the Russian Federation.