MAKHACHKALA, October 19 (RIA Novosti) – The president of the restive southern Russian republic of Dagestan said Friday that punitive measures should be introduced for parents of minors taking part in extremist militant organizations.
Ramazan Abdulatipov’s press office cited him as saying that young people are being conditioned into hatred for other peoples.
Abdulatipov was speaking in the capital of Dagestan, Makhachkala, at the Congress of Russian Peoples, a forum for discussing relations between Russia’s numerous ethnic groups.
A draft bill on the proposal put forward by Abdulatipov is to be presented by the Congress of Russian Peoples to the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament.
The initiative has echoes of an announcement made last month by Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, president of neighboring Ingushetia, that families that had given shelter to militants are to have their houses demolished and their land seized.
More than a decade after the formal end of a federal military campaign against separatists in Chechnya, Russian security forces continue to fight militants in neighboring Dagestan and other regions in the area, who stage frequent attacks on security forces, police and civilians.
