Since 1991 in the North Caucasus thousands of people have gone missing, and so far nobody can say exactly how many of them there are. No state institution or non-governmental organization can present the full list of missing people, which could be a basis for large-scale research and identification activities in the region. For the relatives of missing people a big problem is finding and burying, the remains of the victims, as religion requires. In the autumn of 1992 many Ingush residents of the Prigorodny district of Vladikavkaz lost their relatives. The people were confused, hundreds of them were taken as prisoners of war and many of them never came back. Officially, 205 peopleare on the list of missing people, and their relatives still hope to find them.
Recently, the Ingush Committee on research of prisoners of war and missing people invited people looking for their relatives. Representatives of the Republic's citizenry and inter-ethnic relations department, the Ombudsman's apparatus, the Writers Union and the Chechen committee of national rescue attended the meeting.
The chair of the Ingush Committee for research into prisoners of war and missing people, Ayupa Tsurova, said that although 18 years had passed since the days of the conflict, we're still experiencing the consequences. It's difficult to find the burial places of the conflict's victims. For many years Yelizaveta Barkinkhoyeva has been organizing investigations into the Ingush people missing in the conflict. After her father and brother went missing in 1992, Yelizaveta started helping people who are in a similar situation. She managed to create a bigdatabase. Last year she met with the president of Igushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. A few months later 20 unidentified bodies, which were given to the Ossetian side in 1992 and buried in Nazran, were exhumed. The relatives of the conflict victims gave blood for DNA testing. As a result, 5 bodies were identified.
Now, Yelizaveta Barkinkhoyeva works in the Public Council of the president's envoy in the North Caucasus Federal District, vice-premier Alexander Khloponin, and hopes that the investigations will proceed faster, which could stabilize the situation in the North Caucasus. The committee promotes the creation of an operative investigating group, which would exhume bodies from the burial places discovered in North Ossetia and Ingushetia. They also propose restarting criminal cases on androlepsy."We have lost lots of time. We have to work for a result every day, in Ingushetia just as much as in North Ossetia. There are positive trends, so we hope the process will proceed faster," the leader of the General Lebed Peacemaking Mission, Alexander Mukomolov, said. He thinks that all state and public resources should be used in the course of the investigations. In North Ossetia the search for missing people is going ahead with a positive work spirit.
In Ingushetia there is mutual understanding between all the power structures. The process is also being monitored by the NCFD prosecutor's office. "The presidential line supports us in everything,"
Mukomolov said. He also spoke about the geophysical radar "Rod" (Loza), spectrometers and
other means of finding burial places. These activities are difficult to do, but necessary. They also work with European partners.
Pavel Tsoroyev, Nazran. Exclusively for VK.
