“No foreign passports, no wads of cash could be found”

The regional department of FSB for the Republic of Mordovia reported on the “disclosure of an extremist community.” As a result of a series of searches that took place on October 17-20 in Mordovia and neighboring regions with the involvement of members of the Russian National Guard and the members of the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs), the following was confiscated:

Erzya hand flags on a plastic stick – 2 pcs.
Estonian state flag on a plastic stick – 1 pc.

Magazine “ĚRZÄŃ VAL” (in Erzya) – 1 pc.
Laptops – 2 pcs.
Flash drives – 3 pcs.
External hard drive – 3 pcs.
Mobile phones – 5 pcs.
Envelope postal document – 1 pc.
Book on ethnography “Uurali Kaja” (in Estonian) – 1 pc.
Book of poems (in Erzya) – 1 pc.
Erzya flag lapel pins (Erzya) – 7 pcs.

Further quote: “Based on this fact, a criminal case is being investigated on the basis of a crime under Part 1 of Art. 1 tbsp. 282.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation and management of an extremist community).”

More than a dozen representatives of the Erzya people were raided by FSB in their homes and taken away for interrogation. Among them people who are 70, 80 and even 90 years old!

“The security forces were very disappointed that they found no machine guns, no pistols, no cartridges, no grenades, no poisons. No foreign passports, no wads of cash could be found. Therefore, they laid out the cell phones on the table which they confiscated and placed besides those cell phones the laptop and charger. They spent a lot of time discussing what else to post for the photo report but couldn not come up with anything else,” sharing her experience an Erzya woman who survived the FSB raid.