“I’ll take you into the forest, tie you to a tree, and you’ll stay there all night.”

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I grew up in the village of Michurina, which is part of the small town of Khasavyurt in Dagestan, where mostly Chechens live. Before entering the university, I communicated only with Chechens, and my school was also Chechen. All this time I was a good girl for my parents: I tried not to create problems for them.

When I was little, my father drank heavily. I often saw my parents fight and swear. After such quarrels, my mother took it out on us with her younger sisters and brother: she could beat us because we didn’t make the bed, we didn’t wash the mug after ourselves, we returned from school later than usual. We were constantly restricted in everything, they didn’t let us go anywhere, even for bread. The only place we could go was to school. After 10 years, they began to force me to pray and beat me if I did not want to. I flew often, because it was my least favorite thing to do.

My father did not participate in our upbringing - everything depended on my mother. After the birth of my second sister, when I was five years old, he stopped drinking. He rarely raised his hand to me, but I remember a couple of times when he did it.

At the age of 13-14 I realized that I was an atheist. I watched TV, read books and saw how other people live. I began to have questions about why it was I who was being restricted, while others were not. I was told that I did not have the right to vote, although, as I knew, no one's rights are limited in Islam. But for some reason, in my family, among my neighbors, among everyone I knew, women did not have any rights: neither the right to choose, nor to vote - nothing.

To be honest, because of the culture in which I was raised, I was a terrible homophobic. I realized my orientation at the age of 14, when a new girl transferred to our school. Over time, I began to feel sympathy and affection for her. I even confessed to that girl that, apparently, I was bisexual and an atheist, but she did not take it seriously. It was my first love.

My parents found out about my orientation when I myself told them about it at the university. They began to call me a prostitute and said that it was not clear who I was messing with.

I entered the Dagestan State University in Makhachkala to study physics in order to leave home: it was not difficult, because I graduated from school with a gold medal. In Makhachkala, I met people from the LGBT community and other informal people of Dagestan. They also fled from home, but continued to live in the republic and everything was fine with them. I thought I could do the same.

“My parents decided to take me to the theologians to drive out the genies”

When the summer holidays began after the first course, I got a job making chocolate-covered strawberries. I was 18 years old. Then my father wrote to me and asked why I did not come home. I wrote to my mother that I am an atheist and I understand that my parents will never accept me, so I will not return home.

After that, I blocked my mother, changed the number and threw away the old SIM card. Then I met a young man and told him everything - we decided to leave Makhachkala for a neighboring city to his friends. We hid there for about two days. All this time, my classmates, classmates, acquaintances, curators from the university wrote and called me. I didn't answer anyone.

A few days later, a good friend of mine, whom I trusted, wrote to me that he had received a call from a police officer. A friend said that he was normal and you can talk to him. I did just that: the person who answered that number spoke to me adequately. He said that his parents flooded the police with calls, and he had a sick wife, and [because of this] he could not go to her. For some reason, I felt sorry for him, and I agreed to come to the local police department to write a receipt that I voluntarily left home. I had never encountered the police before, so I did not think that there could be some kind of deception here.

Together with a young man, we arrived at the police station in Kaspiysk, a 40-minute drive from Makhachkala. There I was met by local policemen, and after 50 minutes a car drove up. Two men came out of it and said that we should go to Makhachkala. Then I realized that something was wrong here and it would end badly.

We were brought to the police department in Makhachkala and taken to different rooms. There I met the policeman with whom I spoke on the phone. At first he tried to find out what had happened, and then he began to blame me for everything: “Here you are, informals, creating problems for us, aren't you ashamed? We were also beaten in childhood, but we grew up normal. You are all ungrateful. How long can you run away from home?

I started crying and at that moment my parents entered the room. I asked the police not to take me home, but they didn't listen to me.

When I was brought home, my parents decided to take me to the theologians to exorcise the genies - the demons inside me. The first of the theologians at first read something out loud from the Koran, poked his fingers at me, and as a result said that there were no genies in me and “it’s all a telephone.” He said that I needed to cover myself, bathe in the sacred water - and everything would pass. My parents were unhappy with the result and took me to another theologian who said the same thing.

Then they began to insist that I need to marry the young man with whom I was hiding. I did not want this, but I said that I agreed that they would not take my phone away from me.

“You just haven’t used yet, but you are already addicted”

After a week at home, I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer and I needed to leave. I ran away and went to a friend who allowed me to stay with him in Kizilyurt. I lived there for a couple of days, and then went to Makhachkala, where I rented a room with another girl who also ran away from home.

One day I was visiting a friend. He left for work and then called me and said that the police knew where I was. The friend returned home, opened the door, and at that moment two men quickly came in after him. They showed the police covers, as it turned out later, were fake.

These men said that I needed to go with them to the department, and I agreed, because there was nowhere to go. We went downstairs and they put me in a black Priora with no numbers. I asked them which department they were taking me to. They replied that I would soon find out.

We drove into the private sector, into the courtyard of a three-story building. At that moment, I thought that, most likely, my parents would be waiting for me there, but they took me into the room and said: “Elya, we congratulate you, you are now in the Alliance Recovery rehabilitation center . Your parents contacted us and asked us to find you.” The employees of the “center” boasted that the police had been looking for me for a week, and they were able to find me in one day through my friends. I asked why I was there, if I have no addiction: I do not use drugs and do not drink alcohol. They answered me: “We also started by running away from home. We also had conflicts with our parents, and this led to addiction. You just haven't used yet, but you're already addicted." They also said that it is not normal that I have LGBT communities in my Instagram subscriptions.

The Alliance Recovery Center is not in the unified register of medical organizations, the website contains the data of an outdated medical license that belonged to the Republican Narcological Dispensary, as well as its address. At the same time, there is no information about their connection on the websites of Alliance Recovery and the narcological dispensary. After the story of Elina Ukhmanova appeared in the media, website the Alliance Recovery became unavailable. The director of the organization, Magomedshapi Gaziev, who is listed on the website, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, is the founder and director of only one organization - Zima Leto Service LLC. This legal entity is engaged in the "production of electrical work."

I got hysterical, I cried. So I spent two days in tears alone in the room. On the third day, Magomedshapi [Gaziev], the director of this center, approached me and said that now I will do everything together with the group: go to lectures, have breakfast with them, sleep in the same room. The group at the same time consisted of five to six men from 27 to 46 years old, and all of them had addictions - either drug addiction or alcoholism.

In the lecture room, they explained to me the rules that during the lecture you can’t get up, say anything, look out the windows and open them, and before you leave somewhere, you must ask permission from the leader in the group.

A few weeks later, I faced the first punishment for breaking the rules from the directors of the center - there were two of them. I was forced to rewrite the text three hundred times: “I am an irresponsible lazy junkie who does not care about his life and much more, who is used to living his own way, without changing anything in his life. If I don’t change anything, then later I will die like a stooped dog under a fence.”

After a quarrel between two rehabilitators, I saw them being handcuffed from the railing. One of them, a Chechen Iznaur, hung like that from 11 pm to 4 am because he had a fight with another man. As a punishment, the rehabilitators could be deprived of lunch, forced to do push-ups for the mat.

We had "psychologists" - actually former drug addicts - who often changed. They told us what addiction is and how to deal with it, asked us to write about your childhood, about the first use, about the first problems in using. I constantly asked: “What should I write?”. They told me: “Well, write about your childhood.” So I constantly wrote about my childhood, while others wrote about the use. I often spoke with Magomedshapi on this topic, and he answered: “You are as dependent as we are, you just don’t realize it.”

We were on schedule. Every day, one person was appointed on duty, who was obliged to cook food, set the table, and then clean up after everyone. They could make you clean the whole house if they didn't like the way you cleaned your room. We also had a “candle” - an event where we sat in a circle and each of us introduced ourselves, saying, for example: “I'm David, I'm 26 years old, I'm a drug addict,” and talked about his day. For a long time I said: "Hi, I'm Elya," but after two months I was forced to add that I was addicted. I stayed in this house from July 23 to November 23, 2022.

All this time I was told nothing about my orientation and atheism. But several times they forced me to pray because my father wanted me to do it. Problems arose when I refused. Unlike other people who were there, they treated me not so harshly: they didn’t beat me, didn’t torture me. The maximum forced to write all night that text. Once, when I had a fight with another rehabilitator, we were handcuffed to each other - we walked like that all day.

“I packed my backpack while everyone was sleeping, climbed over the fence, and ran away”

Four months later, my parents came to the center and took me away. For the first week at home, everything was fine, but then major conflicts began when they noticed that I had not changed at all: I did not pray and remained of my opinion. I was repeatedly beaten and threatened. At that moment, one of my cousins, who lived in Siberia, returned. After one of my conflicts with my mother, he came and began to say to me: “What do you think of yourself? You have lost your fear. I will marry you. If I see mom crying again, I’ll just take you to the forest, tie you to a tree, and you’ll stay there all night.”

My parents didn't like that I had my own opinion. For example, that I wear jeans when I need to go out only in dresses, I say that I want to go out and not stay at home all the time, I demand that I respect my rights. I often told them that I wanted to leave, to live separately. They wanted me to be an ordinary rural girl who would marry at the age of 20 and give birth to several children. I didn't need all this.

My father often threatened to put me in a psychiatric hospital, and at some point I found out that they wanted to send me to Chechnya to an Islamic center. I decided that I couldn't wait any longer. I miraculously found my passport - my parents hid it from me - packed my backpack while everyone was sleeping, climbed over the fence and ran away.

First, I went to the neighboring village to ask one of the passers-by to call me a taxi to Kizilyurt. Already there I bought the most deshman phone and contacted a friend who again let me into his apartment. I lived there for about a week and contacted human rights organizations. A few days later, a friend came to the apartment and said that men had just called him, introducing themselves as policemen, and in an hour and a half they would be there. I immediately asked human rights activists what I should do, quickly packed my things and left for the outskirts of the city in a taxi. From there I was taken out of the republic to a safe place.

I understand that no matter where I am, I will not be 100% safe. I would really like to finish my education: to study at the physics and mathematics course and then study either physics or mathematics. Just find yourself.

Before the rehabilitation center, I had many interests, hobbies: I drew, was fond of rocket science, astronomy, read books, but after the center I feel that I was somehow lost in life. I don’t know where to go next, although somehow I still hold on to physics and the desire to finish my education.

I don't have any friends that I keep in touch with. I understand that if they reach them, they will simply hand me over. I do not keep in touch with my sisters and brother: they took the side of my parents and believe that this was necessary for my upbringing.

Kholod would like to thank the CK SOS crisis team for their help in arranging the interview.