Mourning events by Chechen officials question legality of penalties for violating quarantine

The Chechen officials who gathered at the grave of Akhmat Kadyrov on May 10 violated the restrictions imposed because of coronavirus; however, they will not be punished, among other things, because of the controversial legality of these measures, the lawyers interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" believe.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the "Grozny" ChGTRK (Chechen State TV and Radio Company) showed a video depicting the closest retinue of Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, visiting the grave of his father on the republic's Mourning and Sorrow Day, which is marked on May 10. It is seen in the video that the visitors to Akhmat Kadyrov's grave in Akhmat-Yurt were without medical masks and failed to observe the social distance.

Purely formally, the Prosecutor's Office, the "Rospotrebnadzor" (Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing) or the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) could pay attention to the non-compliance of the behaviour of the Chechen leadership with the established rules of self-isolation, said Timofei Shirokov, a lawyer.

At the same time, he has noted that holding people accountable under the Code of Administrative Offenses for violating the self-isolation regime is a debatable issue in itself. "Whether it is possible to punish people precisely under these articles is still an open issue, since no state of emergency has been announced," the lawyer has explained.

In her turn, Marina Agaltsova, a lawyer at the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial", believes that the Chechen officials' actions contain a violation of the Code of Administrative Offenses.

In her opinion, the Chechen officials have violated the normative act that obliges residents of the republic, for example, to wear medical masks, if they had one, and observe the social distance, as well as self-isolation, if such act had been enforced there. "As far as I know from Moscow, mourning dates are no grounds for violating the self-isolation regime. Therefore, it turns out that the Chechen authorities had violated the self-isolation normative acts adopted by themselves," Ms Agaltsova asserts.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on May 13, 2020 at 11:45 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.