On January 2, in the Dagestani city of Kaspiysk, a police officer from Yaroslavl (pictured) shot Agay Magomedov, a father of five, in the head at point-blank range in front of his relatives. According to eyewitnesses, the victim, who owned a beauty salon, had slapped his intoxicated employee for unruly behavior. The police officers who arrived at the scene intervened on her behalf, and when one of them threatened to use his gun, Magomedov replied, «Shoot, hero, shoot. The policeman then shot him directly in the head.
According to the official version of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), this happened «accidentally» — the shot was meant as a warning, but the dead man allegedly tried to grab the pistol, causing it to hit him in the head. Eyewitnesses, however, claim it was intentional. The incident has caused outrage in Dagestan. This is not surprising — similar incidents in the United States, such as the recent killing of George Floyd, an African-American, have sparked mass protests and riots across the country under the slogan «Black Lives Matter. Some have already drawn parallels between the two situations that we believe need to be clarified.
The issues of the use of police weapons in conflict situations, police powers and their relationship to the civilian population are relevant in many places. They are resolved differently in different countries, depending on the level of crime, the degree of risk to police officers, their authority, and so on.
However, this is not the case with the murder of Agay Magomedov, a former MIA employee. After all, in the United States and in all normal countries, local police forces are responsible for maintaining law and order at the local level. Their personnel are familiar with the mentality and peculiarities of the local population and are known to them. Only in occupied territories do non-local police forces, representing the occupying country, perform policing functions, perceiving the local population as a potential threat.
Would a local policeman, the victim’s compatriot, have acted in the same way in this situation? Obviously not. After all, he and his family would continue to live in that town, so he would have tried to resolve the situation with arguments that were understandable to the mentality of his fellow countryman. So why is it that instead of such a local policeman solving problems at the local level, there is a person who treats the local population the same way an Israeli soldier treats Palestinians in the occupied territories?
The answer to this question is known — because the Kremlin has long treated Dagestan not as a republic of the federal state, but as an occupied territory, governed by a military-colonial administration and methods since the appointment of Vladimir Vasilyev (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=33176). The appointment of the former deputy head of the National Guard, Sergei Melikov, as the new head of Dagestan in the fall of 2020 only confirmed this attitude.
Speaking specifically about the situation in Kaspiysk, where this tragedy occurred, the attitude of the colonial authorities towards the Dagestanis can be judged by the way the mayor of the city, also a general of the National Guard, treats his local subordinates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV6XzBLHpUw
If one after another Moscow generals become the heads of Dagestan, and even the mayors of its cities, should we be surprised that the functions of the local police are carried out by forced military men from Central Russia, who do not care about the Dagestani mentality?
Therefore, if we discuss this case as a reason for BLM in Dagestan, its goal should not only be to punish a policeman and prevent similar incidents in the future, but to return the power in Dagestan to the Dagestanis, who should choose their leaders through free elections and not be ruled by Moscow’s military men.