Translated material
The ECHR awarded more than 16 thousand euros in compensation to a Chechen woman whose father-in-law prohibits her from communicating with her children.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has awarded 16,250 euros in compensation to Luiza Tapaeva, a resident of Chechnya, who has been prevented from communicating with her children since 2015 by the father of her deceased husband. This was reported to Novaya Gazeta in the Legal Initiative*.
In addition, the court ordered the Russian authorities to pay 9,196 legal costs. In the case of Tapaeva, the European Court found a violation of Article 14 (discrimination on the basis of sex) in connection with Article 8 (right to family life). A violation of the latter article was also found in the cases of four other applicants, but no compensation was awarded to them.
Tapaeva, in her complaint to the ECHR, indicated that she was demanding the return of four minor children whom she gave birth to from her husband, who died in 2015. The father of the deceased took the children, and since then he has prevented the mother from communicating with them.
The ECtHR specified in the communication that it was ready to consider the issue of systemic violations of women's rights in the North Caucasus region in the context of family law. He also declared his readiness to study discriminatory norms, in the "Legal Initiative" noted that they are "actually supported by the regional and federal authorities."
First, in 2016, Tapaeva applied to the Urus-Martan city court to obtain custody of the children, but the court sided with her father-in-law. After numerous hearings, she appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of Ingushetia, and in June 2017 the same court of first instance ruled that the children should be with their mother. However, in April 2018, a decision was again made in favor of Tapaeva's father-in-law. The woman, in turn, appealed against the decision on guardianship and at the same time applied to the ECtHR.
At the same time, the children of Tapaeva were not given away: the bailiffs did not carry out enforcement actions since 2018, did not put her father-in-law on the wanted list and did not hold him accountable. Since the last decision in favor of her father-in-law, the woman has not seen her children, and since the death of her husband, she has tried to communicate with them regularly.
“We have two conclusions from a psychologist, after the study, she described PTSD and the trauma of girls who had not seen their mother for many years, they were pressured to disgust their mother, now they are simply aggressive towards her and are afraid of her. We petitioned that the children’s communication should take place outside the grandfather’s house, where they are under pressure, until this condition is met, it is difficult to carry out enforcement actions,” said lawyer Aiza Magomadova, who worked with the Tapaeva case in Russian courts.