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North Caucasus Authorities Crack Down on Loud Laughter

Yelena Afonina / TASS

Magas is getting serious about laughter.

The administrative center of Russia’s republic of Ingushetia in the North Caucasus has issued a brochure advising youngsters how to behave in public, its mayor Beslan Tsechoyev said. 

“A single shouted obscenity, the shrill laughter of young men or the sight of girls sitting on benches and ignoring passing adults — it grips the soul with horror,” Tsechoyev wrote on Instagram.

The brochure “promoting the Ingush people’s traditional values” includes visual depictions of the “Ingush code of conduct” and is printed in Russian and Ingush as well as English.

The pamphlets will be handed out in public places, including schools when the new academic year starts, the mayor wrote on Saturday.

Tsechoyev added that he hoped the brochures would “give impetus to our small battle with the weeds trying to sprout on the fertile land of our beautiful people.”

The predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region has seen a rapid weakening of its traditional generational and gender hierarchies along with a simultaneous spread of fundamentalist Islam among young men, a recent study of families in the region said.

The Moscow Times has been unable to gain access to the brochure.

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