Spirit of the Highlands

5 main reasons to never turn off the Internet in Chechnya

On October 20, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov called for shutting down the Internet in the republic in order to ensure peace and protect the population from the influence of radical Islamist preachers. As the politician said, despite all the obvious negative aspects of such a decision, blocking the global network in the region would allow people to “stop killing each other.”

Kadyrov's comments seriously alarmed TJournal, which is fond of all types of original Internet content from Chechnya. Remembering how quickly in Russia the words of government officials can turn into laws, the editors have compiled a selection of what they will miss most if the network in the republic is actually turned off.

1. Tweets in Chechen

It is unknown how many residents of the Caucasian republic use the microblogging service Twitter. On the social network you can find several hundred popular accounts that are maintained in Chechen. In addition to the national language Nokhchiin, many of them also use Russian to write messages.

The colorfulness of Chechen tweets made them popular far beyond the region itself. Messages written in Nokhchiyn can sometimes be found in the most unexpected places. For example, in the microblog of journalist Oleg Kashin.

Ezakh tsa ekhakh so hya yu hyuna!

— Kashin, Kashin, Kashin (@KSHN) April 9, 2013

@kshn I already shed tears. :)Can I find out where I know the language from?

— Lolita Asueva (@Lolamar17272964) April 9, 2013

Nokhchiin tweets undeniably look cool on any news feed. The only difficulty is that you need to check their translation before posting it on a social network.

2. Kadyrov’s Instagram

Speaking about a possible shutdown of the Internet in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov risks imposing restrictions primarily on himself. The president is known for his love of Instagram, and his account on the photo service is extremely popular and often becomes the subject of discussion in the media.

Kadyrov’s photo feed mainly consists of photographs taken during working visits, meetings and travels around the Caucasus. In addition, videos and photos from mosques and the gym regularly appear in it.

Kadyrov rarely uses filters, and it is completely impossible to read all the comments under his publications due to the dominance of Chechen subscribers trying to contact the politician and ask for help. However, waking up in the morning and finding a fresh video of morning prayer on Instagram with a short commentary from the head of the republic is priceless.

3. Chechen Instagrams in general

The love of Instagram is not unique to Ramzan Kadyrov. The application is actively used by thousands of residents of Chechnya. Most of their photographs are in no way inferior to, and in many ways superior in color to, the photographs from the presidential account.

If one day the TJournal robot returns empty-handed after collecting photographs from Grozny, it will, frankly, be very disappointing. We will have to come up with another way to look through the eyes of the participants at the 100,000-strong procession in honor of Vladimir Putin’s birthday.

4. Chechen publics on VKontakte

A huge number of users from the Chechen Republic are registered on the most popular Russian social network - VKontakte. In Grozny alone, there are at least 126 thousand people using the site. Many of them are members of various groups and communities dedicated to Chechnya, Chechen music, cuisine and traditions.

Very often, the content of such public pages allows you to get an idea of ​​the culture of the republic much better than the picture of the next federal channel reporting on a special operation in Chechnya or a record pace of housing construction.

5. Videos of Chechen weddings on YouTube

A hypothetical Internet shutdown in Chechnya will also deprive network users of the ability to upload videos of weddings to YouTube. Chechen weddings are known for their scale and at the same time extremely respectful attitude towards traditions. And even though the videos shot during the celebrations are not of high quality, the atmosphere of everything that happens compensates for all the shortcomings of the camera work. And I certainly don’t want to lose this.

Ramzan Akhmatovich, maybe it’s not worth it,
Victor Stepanov,
TJournal

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