Russian republic petition calls 2007 vote a fraud

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people in southern Russia have signed a petition calling their 2007 parliamentary election fraudulent in a rare public display of defiance against authorities, an organizer said on Wednesday.

Last month a reported 99-percent voter turnout in conflict-scarred Ingushetia posted near unanimous support for Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, a fact local petition organizer Magomed Evloev said he has disproved.

Evloev, who used to manage a Web site critical of Ingushetia's Kremlin-backed leader Marat Zyazikov, said he had gathered 88,000 signatures from people who say they did not vote, out of a total population of 450,000.

"Around six percent (of the population) voted in the Duma elections, and the majority of those voted for (liberal opposition party) Yabloko," Evloev told Reuters.

Ingush authorities have always said the vote was fair.

Evloev said his was not an opposition movement, and instead wanted to bring an end to corruption and order to Ingushetia.

"We want to live peacefully, without death squads operating in the republic, without people being kidnapped and murdered."

"If the officials don't pay attention to these demands then the results will be bad. Young people will become radicalized. Right now the main resistance (fighters) in Chechnya are Ingush," Evloev said.

Mainly Muslim Ingushetia borders Chechnya, the key battleground for two wars since 1994 between separatist rebels and Russian soldiers.

Fighting still breaks out in Chechnya, while in neighboring Ingushetia and Dagestan the security situation has deteriorated further. Barely a day passes without a shooting, attack, police operation, murder or abduction.

In November, a week before the 2007 election, hundreds protested in Nazran against the police and the republic's government, burning United Russia flags and screaming anti-Kremlin slogans.

Police beat protesters with sticks and confiscated reporters' television equipment.

Other Northern Caucasus republics recorded similar turnout figures and a United Russia victory. Throughout the entire country United Russia won around 64 percent of the vote.

Web sites and bloggers in Russia report that the police harassed and threatened both the people collecting the signatures and the people signing the petition in Ingushetia.

Evloev and his supporters have sent the petition to the Russian Prosecutor-General in Moscow and asked him to annul the result.

(Writing by James Kilner in Moscow, editing by Sami Aboudi)