We've banned everything that's coming from [Denmark] and they won't be in our republic. [...] As for Danish organizations present here, we won't grant them access anymore because of this.
One of these organizations is the Danish Refugee Council, which, according to RFE/RL, has been in the Caucasus region for seven years and "says it distributes food to 250,000 people in the region each month."
Here's the reaction of the Russian Duma folks:
[...] Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said he believed Acting Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov was expressing his personal opinion, noting that the Chechen government has made no official decision as yet.
"I think such statements should be at least passed through an official governing body first," Gryzlov said. "I view it only as a personal statement."
Pavel Krasheninnikov, the head of the Duma's legislative committee, said the ban would run counter to Russian legislation. [...]
I wonder whose side those hungry 250,000 refugees are on and what they are saying on the issue in the privacy of whatever it is they live in.
Maybe Ramzan's just being crafty - and following Moscow's lead, for once - by using a religious pretext for getting one of those pesky foreign NGO's out of the way. That was the first thing I thought of when I saw that his sweeping, ridiculous ban would be extended in perpetuity to the Danish Refugee Council.
ReplyDeleteyeah, playing little putin... it did occur to me later, too, after i was able to think of it more in the context of russia than in the context of the 'muslim world'...
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