AI points UN to human rights violations in Chechnya

The situation with human rights violations in Russia has worsened, the Amnesty International (AI) has stated in a submission to the UN High Commissioner, highlighting the cases of persecution of critics of the authorities and human rights defenders in Chechnya.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on April 14, the "Memorial" Centre for Human Rights Defence, the "Russian Legal Initiative" and the SK SOS Crisis Group sent a report to the UN on the deterioration of the human rights situation in Northern Caucasus, describing cases of persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya and Dagestan.

The human rights situation in Russia has aggravated since [the start of the special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine] in February 2022, the AI has stated.

"Critics of local authorities in Chechnya are being arbitrarily arrested … amid the overall impunity that dominates in the region. In 2020, Salman Tepsurkaev, a blogger and the moderator of a Telegram channel that criticizes the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, was kidnapped, tortured and, according to his colleagues, killed by law enforcers," the AI's report asserts.

"In 2022, Zarema Musaeva, the mother of Abubakar Yangulbaev, a Chechen human rights defender, was ... taken to Chechnya and falsely accused of assaulting a policeman, apparently in retaliation for her son's activities," the AI has also stated.

"In 2019, Oyub Titiev, the head of the "Memorial"* office in Chechnya, was sentenced to four years in prison on trumped-up drug charges," the report has added.