Co-chair of "Golos" receives threats after fake text about Dagestan

Andrei Buzin, one of the leaders of the "Golos" (Vote) movement in voters' defence, has received threats on behalf of residents of Dagestan, who were offended by some text ascribed to Mr Buzin.

The offended authors have demanded apologies from Andrei Buzin, a co-chair of the "Golos", for his unflattering remarks about Dagestanis in his text of presentation of some observer who worked in Dagestan for the medal "Defender of Free Elections". "Today, I was warned that I had offended Dagestan," Andrei Buzin wrote on November 18 in his Facebook page.

The caller, according to Buzin, demanded from him an apology for the word "subjects" used in relation to Dagestanis; and after his refusal, the caller hung up.

Mr Buzin has suggested that the "threats" may have to do not with Dagestan at all, but with the campaign against the "Golos" movement itself.

As it turned out, the entire accusation of Mr Buzin of insulting Dagestanis was based on a falsified, according to his version, presentation of the above observer, who had worked in Dagestan, to the medal "Defender of Free Elections". As Andrei Buzin has emphasized that when he compared the original text of the presentation with the version circulated on the Internet, he found that the words "uneducated, near-minded nation", "cowards" and "scumbags" were deliberately inserted into the text.

"The above words are not present in my text! The word 'subjects' was deliberately crossed out and replaced with the word 'citizens'. The above words are presented and repeatedly emphasized as my insults to Dagestanis. This is a pure incitement to interethnic hatred," Mr Buzin has written.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on December 3, 2019 at 11:58 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.