Human rights activists from the "Memorial" in the Caucasus are kidnapped, put in prison, and kill. Why are they so cruelly pursued?

On January 9, in Grozny, the head of the Chechen representative office of the Memorial Oyub Titiev was arrested for drug storage. And on the night of January 17 in Nazran, the office of the Ingush representative office of the Memorial burned out in Nazran. Memorial is the most important human rights organization in Russia. In the North Caucasus, it has been working since the beginning of the 1990s and is now a key structure, a monitoring situation with human rights in this region. Every year to continue this activity is becoming increasingly difficult: human rights activists from the Memorial and other organizations threaten, they are attacked, they are put in jail. Medusa resembles the main episodes of the persecution of the Memorial in Ingushetia and Chechnya.

The Memorial has been working in the Caucasus since the beginning of the 1990s. Since then, the organization has been persecuted there

Back in 1993-1994, employees of the organization were investigating the consequences of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict-both republics claimed a suburban district in North Ossetia (remained as part of this region). With the outbreak of the First Chechen war in 1994, the employees of the Memorial recorded the facts of pre-trial executions, torture and other violations of human rights-both from the militants and from the Russian army.

According to Alexander Cherkasov, a member of the Memorial Board, in the 1990s, the company’s employees had many different “adventures in the Caucasus”, but he finds it difficult to say which actions were directed precisely against human rights defenders-along with them in Chechnya they limited the work to journalists, employees of international organizations like the “Red Cross” and many others. The authorities refused them in access to certain settlements, they refused to share information with them. The militants abducted people: they were captured by the NTV film crew with journalist Elena Masyuk, Channel ORT Channel Roman Perevyentsev and Vladislav Tibelius, Red Cross officers, and representatives of the organizations of soldiers' mothers.

In 2007, Oleg Orlov, the head of the Memorial, was abducted in Nazran. The security forces were involved in this abduction

On November 24, 2007, Nazran (at that time - the capital of Ingushetia) should be an ended opposition rally. The reason was the unintentional murder by the security forces of a six -year -old boy during one of the operations to eliminate militants.

Oleg Orlov, the head of the Memorial, arrived to observe the rally in Nazran. In one hotel, the journalists of the REN TV channel, who were preparing to illuminate the rally, stopped with him. Late in the evening of November 23, the eagles and three people of the film crew were stolen directly from their numbers: unknown in masks put bags on their heads, brought them onto the street, put them on a minibus, took more than an hour in an unknown direction, periodically beat and threatened to kill, and then they threw it out of the car with the words “never return here again”.

The Ingush police did not find the crime in the incident, the criminal case was not instituted. In March 2017, the European Court of Human Rights awarded the victims of 84 thousand euros and admitted that employees of law enforcement agencies participated in the abduction.

In the Caucasus, human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was killed. After that, the conditions for work there were catastrophically deteriorated

Human rights activist Natalya Estemirova began working in the Grozny Representative of the Memorial in November 2001. She identified and documented the illegal actions of the Russian and Chechen security forces, extrajudicial executions and abductions of people in Chechnya and Ingushetia, repeatedly declared the involvement of Ramzan Kadyrov.

For the first time, Estemirova had to leave Grozny in 2004 - after publishing an interview with Ramzan Kadyrov “Central from the Center”, which he gave the journalist of Novaya Gazeta Anna Politkovskaya, Cherkasov told Medusas. The surname Estemirova was not mentioned in the text, but because of the aggressive statements of Kadyrov to journalists and human rights activists as a whole, the employees of Memorial decided that Estemirova would be better off to leave the republic for several months.

For another six months, Estemirova had to leave Chechnya in 2008, after the REN-TV channel showed the plot about the forced dress code for women in the republic-the human rights activist spoke out against such practice in an interview with such a practice. “Then Natasha was still under study: [representatives of the authorities] called her for an interview and, in the presence of television, tried to put her in place. But Natasha was a school teacher, so she herself put in the place of Kadyrov. I'm just not sure that this contributed to her safety, ”says Cherkasov.

On July 15, 2009, in Grozny, Natalya Estemirova was abducted by unknown. A few hours later, her body with bullet wounds was found in the Nazran district of Ingushetia, next to the Chechen border. The killers are still unknown.

According to Cherkasov, after the murder of the Estemirova, the work condition of human rights activists in the North Caucasus changed “catastrophically”: “Residents of the North Caucasus republics refuse to go to human rights defenders, because, as it turned out, they cannot protect themselves.”

In 2018, the head of the Chechen “memorial” Oyub Titiev was arrested in Grozny. Allegedly he kept drugs

According to Cherkasov, starting in 2014, criminal cases have been fabricated against activists and human rights activists in the Caucasus for the illegal storage of drugs: this is how the civil activist Ruslan Kutaev and the Caucasian Knot correspondent were condemned.

On January 9, 2018, 30 kilometers from Grozny detained the head of the Chechen representative office of the Memorial Oyub Titiev. A criminal case of illegal possession of drugs has been instituted against him, Titiev himself was arrested. The Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that in the human rights activist a “polymer bag with a substance of plant origin with a specific smell of marijuana weighing about 180 grams” was found. Cherkasov also considers the case of Titiev’s case “factory” and recalls Alaudinov, Deputy Minister of the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs, who called for the fight against enemies, throwing them up drugs.

What Titiev and other human rights activists in Chechnya did, their colleagues have not been telling for a long time so as not to endanger anyone. According to Elena Milashina, a journalist of Novaya Gazeta, a journalist of Novaya Gazeta, in 2017, Titiev investigated the circumstances of the suspects in extremism. This happened in January 2017 on the territory of the regiment of the Akhmat Kadyrov patrol service. "New" then wrote that 27 people were killed there. Perhaps Titiev’s arrest is associated with this investigation.

In 2018, they set fire to the Memorial office in Nazran

On the night of January 17, 2018, Nazran set fire to the Memorial office. Employees of the human rights organization were not injured; Computers, furniture and documents burned completely. Officially, nothing was reported about the causes of the fire, but in the office of the head of the representative office of Timur Akiev they found a molten plastic bottle, which smelled of kerosene.

CCTV cameras recorded how a car drove up to the building at night, two people in masks came out of it, one of them, using the ladder, threw a plastic bottle out the window.

The head of the Memorial Oleg Orlov connected the arson of the office with a criminal case against the head of the Chechen Memorial. The head of Ingushetia Yunus Bek Evkurov, at a personal meeting with Akiev, promised to assist in the investigation.

Commenting on the arrest of Titiev and the fire in the office of the Memorial in Nazran, the press secretary of Vladimir Putin Dmitry Peskov called not to draw generalized conclusions about the oppression of human rights defenders in Chechnya. “There is an investigation and, in fact, only the investigation to correctly determine how substantiated these accusations are,” Peskov said about the case of Oyub Titiev. Speaking about the incident in Nazran, Peskov said that "these are two different republics, two different subjects of the Russian Federation."

All working in the Caucasus are exposed to hazards

On December 4, 2014, militants attacked the Press House in Grozny, during the operation they were killed; 14 policemen died. The next day, Kadyrov said that "the families of the militants will be immediately expelled outside Chechnya without the right to return, and [their] houses are demolished with the foundation." On the same day, four houses were demolished. The head of the human rights “Committee against torture” Igor Kalyapin wrote a statement to the Investigative Committee on Kadyrov. He insisted that relatives of the militants could only be punished if the court establishes their participation in a crime.

Kadyrov wrote on his Instagram: “A certain Kalyapin defended the bandits and their relatives. In Chechnya, I am engaged in the protection of human rights. ” On December 14, the Office of the Consolidated Mobile Group was set on fire and burned to the ground. Human rights activists from the Memorial and the Committee against torture held a press conference in Moscow on this occasion; During a meeting, unknown people broke into the hall and threw eggs with eggs.

On January 14, 2015, unknown people threw eggs of the Memorial office in the Chechen Hudermmes. Svetlana Gannushkina, a member of the Council of Memorial, told then that five people in masks broke into the room where two employees were located; They threw eggs and shouted: "You protect Kalyapin!" Then none of the Memorial was seriously injured.

The renovated office of the Consolidated Mobile Group was defeated in June 2015; The human rights activists did not make new attempts to open it.

Sasha Sulim