Dagestan: ten Krasnoarmeisk residents detained at protest action

Power agents have dispersed residents of the Makhachkala dwelling settlement of Krasnoarmeisk, who opposed demolition of houses, Magomed Guseinov, the chairman of the local board of elders, reports. According to his story, policemen were shooting in the air and detained ten people.

Mr Guseinov said that today construction machines have arrived in the settlement; and residents tried to block them.

"A conflict broke out of residents with representatives of the man who claims that he is the owner of the land in the settlement, where houses had been built," said Guseinov, explaining that the origin of the problem is in "the land conflict": in 1944, residents of the village of Verkhnie Ubeki of the Levashin District of Dagestan were evicted to Chechnya. "In 1957, we were allowed to return; and the state allocated land plots in Krasnoarmeisk to us," Mr Guseinov reports.

"Earlier, this land belonged to our collective farm, but later, without our knowledge, officials documented these 49 hectares of land as their ownership. Our struggle for this land lasts for years; now, it turns out that the land had been sold to an Azerbaijani citizen," Magomed Guseinov has concluded.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.