Exile

Novyevrope found the victim of “conversion therapy”, held at the Dagestan “rehabilitation center” for drug addicts, homosexuals and atheists. Here is her monologue

In Russia, the next scandal around the rehabilitation center in Dagestan "Alliance of the Rakavian" does not subside. It took patients suffering from alcohol and drug addictions, as well as “treated” from homosexuality and atheism. According to the crisis group of SOS SOS, in Russia the number of similar “rehabilitation centers” is growing, where they offer services for the so -called “conversion therapy”. If earlier such practices were used mainly in the North Caucasus, now they are spreading in other regions, human rights activists say. Law enforcement agencies usually ignore statements about these crimes.

The New Gazeta Europe has already told the story of Magomed Askhabov, who was forced to be subjected to such “therapy”. Recently it became known about the next patient who managed to escape from Rehab. Elin Ukhmanova was forcibly delivered and forcibly kept in the center by order of parents. We found the ex-pacent man "Rehaba" and talked with her.

- I grew up in Khasavyurt, in the Dagestan city next to Chechnya, we have a Chechen family. I'm the eldest in the family. My first language is Chechen. At home, I was not allowed to speak Russian. I speak Russian without an emphasis thanks to my school teachers.

I remember a little about my childhood. I remember how a drunken father came home, rushed at his mother, there were constant scandals. Mom left him to her relatives, leaving the children. Sometimes I took us with me. Often angry at us and beaten for the offenses and children's pranks. I got from my father less often.

When my father, already an adult, asked if I remember how he walked with me and drove me somewhere, I understood that I did not remember. Mom constantly exhorted her dad, talked about religion, tried to force him to observe the canons of Islam. Pray, do not drink alcohol. And over time, he really became much more religious.

Once aunts came to us, a conversation came about domestic violence. Aunts said that it is impossible to allow Abuez from the side of the man.

And my mother replied that the woman was created for that to endure. And she added that she would have considered herself disgraced if she had left her husband.

Our family maintained a close connection with Chechen relatives, always lived in Chechen traditions and orders. This is a closed society where strangers are not allowed. Although Khasavyurt is the territory of Dagestan, but before entering the university, I almost never came across Dagestanis. Our village is completely Chechen, only Chechens studied at my school. Only having become a student, I began to study the nature and customs of local.

Every year, my parents and I went to Chechnya to Uraza-Bayram for the Father's relatives. And at school at the end of the school year, the class and I went to Grozny. Sometimes we were taken to the City Museum of Khasavyurt. This is the only museum in the city, and for so many years it is tired. It was our whole cultural life.

At school, I was always a "botanist." I dreamed of having friends and friends, I wanted to live brightly, as in series and films. But I did not succeed.

As a teenager, I fell in love with a school friend. Then I did not tell her about this, but after the eleventh grade I admitted. She turned the conversation as a joke, since then we have not seen her.

Since the age of fourteen, I have been sitting on VKontakte, talked with many LGBT-star. This was the only one of my outlet. We discussed films, TV shows, talked about events in our life, about study, work, about beloved dogs. Among the interlocutors was a guy who, during our communication, made a camming out and a transgender transition. He told us how the process goes and what problems he ran into. The rest supported him. But basically in this chat we did not share too personal. And I kept anonymity there.

My parents wanted to give me to the Chechen University, but in the end they sent me to the Makhachkala university.

Until my first escape, I hid my interests and opinions that go beyond the settings of my family. Relatives considered me a good and correct obedient girl. And I just waited for the moment to escape, I planned the escape. Already from school I knew that I did not want to live there.

During the summer holidays after the first year, I did not return home. I passed the exams and got a job. I informed my father in correspondence that I did not believe in God and understand that my parents would not accept me with such views.

Also in Telegram, I informed my mother about my bisexuality, and then I threw off the SIM card, changed the phone number and left for several days in Caspiysk. My parents began to look for me through my classmates, friends and acquaintances in Makhachkala. They also turned to the police, put me on the wanted list. And I came across, in my stupidity.

I had never encountered the police, and when an employee of the department called me, I thought he would be on my side. I arrived at the nearest department to sign the paper that I don’t need to look for me, I left the house voluntarily. I have the right, I'm already adult. But from the department in Kaspiysk, I, together with my friend, were taken to the police department in Makhachkala. It turned out that they called me from there. The policeman who called me began to shame me, crushed and blamed that I had escaped from my parents. And soon they themselves appeared. The police simply betrayed me to my mother and dad, regardless of my request, not to do this.

Parents told me that I want to leave home to become a prostitute, and I could no longer become anyone else. I don’t know exactly how they took the news about my sexual orientation, but, having caught me the first time, they began to convince me to marry my boyfriend.

They live in such a close and closed world that they do not see life outside their circle of communication and outside the republic. My parents are sure that the university adversely influenced me. They regretted that they sent me to study in Makhachkala, and not in Chechnya. There we have many relatives, there it would be easier for them to control me.

Soon after returning home, I was taken to the Islamic Theologian. It was a small room in a shopping center. He “diagnosed” me, sticking my fingers in me under the reading of the Qur'an, and said that I have no gin in me, that “it's all because of the phone” and “she needs to wear a hijab”. He gave with him a container with sacred water and ordered to swim in it. I did not do this. My parents also did not succeed in making me hijab either.

My parents did not agree with the diagnosis and after a short time I was again taken to the exorcist . We arrived at a private house. I was laid on the bed, covered with my head and began to read prayers over me.

I was scared to move so that my movements would not be accepted for the movement of Gin. I touched me with sticks, then with my hands, I wanted it to end as soon as possible.

A week after these events, I left for Makhachkala and rented an apartment with a friend's friend. Relatives began to look for me again and interviewed me all my friends. For a month they could not find me.

Later I learned that parents turned to a rehabilitation center for people with alcohol and drug dependence of the Rakavian Alliance.

The leaders of the center, Magomedshapi Gaziev and his companion, called my friends, introduced themselves to the police, crushed, threatened and achieved information about me from some.

Once, my friend, with whom I was visiting, went to work, but soon called and said that the police contacted him, demanding that they take them into the apartment to take me to the police department.

These were the very leaders of the rehabilitation center. My friend let them in. I will never forget this scene. Two men come in, show some certificate, they shoot everything on the video. They take me away and put me in Prior without numbers, do not answer questions. Brought to some yard. A three -story house, windows and doors are taken by gratings. They explain to me that my parents directed me here and here I will undergo treatment.

On the ground floor there were a kitchen and a guard room, on the second - rooms for patients, and on the third - lecture. A schedule hung on the wall. The rise was at eight in the morning. The kitchen duty officer was supposed to prepare breakfast. Everyone led to exercise, then for breakfast, then at the lecture of the psychologist. Psychologists called former drug addicts here, they gave lectures. After that, we received tasks for the day. Among the tasks was, for example, to compile a story about their first drug use and about the first conscious desire to use them. There was nothing special further. Lunch, in the evening - dinner and hang up.

I have never taken drugs, I have no addictions. I talked about it all the time and asked: what should I write? The leaders told me: write about your childhood, about parents, about problems with parents. And I had to write. Magomedshapi Gaziev said that I am dependent, but I do not realize it.

The failure to fulfill tasks and poor behavior followed the punishment. They could deprive lunch or dinner, for example. For a quarrel with one of the rehabilitants, I was once chained to him handcuffs. We were forced to walk together all day.

Once I did not get out in the kitchen, they made a remark to me and imposed a punishment. All night it was necessary to rewrite the same text:

“I am an irresponsible lazy handkerchief, which is indifferent to my life and much more, which is used to living in its own way, changing nothing in my life. If I do not change anything, I will subsequently die, like a stooped dog, under the fence. ”

I tried not to think about anything, I just completed the task so that they would not be lagged from me and no longer punished me. I saw that other rehabilitants who somehow stand out are physically punished. Once I saw how for a fight with another rehabilitant of the original, a Chechen, they chained handcuffs to the railing. So he stood for a day. I was very scared that they would come to me the same way. After what I saw, I tried not to stand out, not to pay attention and be sweet and executive.

Products were brought to us once a month. Sometimes they ended ahead of time. Then we asked the director to bring more, but he delayed the supply, and we had to survive on potatoes and cabbage. Every week we wrote a list of the necessary things, handed over to the leadership of the center, and those to relatives. The family collected the parcel, it was also transferred through the leadership of the center. I lived in the clinic from July 23 to November 23, 2021. For this, my parents paid about a hundred thousand rubles.

I asked for a meeting with my parents or at least a conversation on the phone. But I have not achieved this.

I was very scared there, especially in the early days, I did not know why I was there, and did not see the point in this. Of course, my relations with my parents were not rainbow, but I did not assume that they could lock me in such a place. For me it was a betrayal. Before that, I never talked with adult men, except in the family. And here I was surrounded by unfamiliar men from 27 to 47 years old, and they are all drug addicts, albeit for treatment. The first days I even spent the night in the guard's room with him.

For a long time I was the only girl there. In the last month, two more Dagestanians appeared. They came to be treated voluntarily. One is from drug addiction, the second - from alcoholism. They believed that the clinic program would help them.

One of them said that she was promised to settle in the female part. They said that she almost did not have to face men. But in fact, we spent all the time with men, only slept separately.

In the summer, I began to ask the leaders of the clinic, what to do next. I had to return to the university, I wanted to remind my parents about it. But the leaders said that I would forget about my studies.

Four months later, my parents arrived and took me home. Then I lived in the position of a home prisoner. I constantly had conflicts with my parents. I was beaten, threatened to kill, and put me in a psychiatric hospital, and send me to an Islamic center in Chechnya. Apparently, I had depression, I did not want to do anything. My parents forced me to go to my relatives, to talk with them, to do housework.

I was not allowed to use the phone, my sisters were forbidden to give it to me. My sisters generally supported my mother and accused me that she was crying because of me. One of my sisters experienced more violence in childhood than I, but for some reason justifies him. As a child, I was quiet, and she allowed myself insolence, and she fell. And now she is supposedly satisfied with everything, all orders and restrictions.

I woke up at four in the afternoon, then did not sleep until four or five in the morning. At home, we had the only book, “Rented by the Wind,” two volumes. I read a few pages every night to stretch this reading longer. There were no other classes. I was not allowed to leave the house. I felt like an animal that was kept in a cage all my life, then released for a short while and put it in a cage again. It even now seems to me that I dream of all this, I will wake up at home soon, and I will have to think about how to run away again.

In those days, every day I said to myself: "Today I will run away, today I will run away." And so it went on from November to August. I was stopped by the fear that they would catch me again, that I would have to survive nightmares again, that the punishment would be much tougher. They threatened me to put me at a crazy house, get married, tie it to a tree in the forest ...

In August, I somehow heard the homemade discuss that it would be nice to send me to some kind of Islamic educational center in Chechnya. I decided that it was no longer possible to postpone the escape.

I wrote to SK SOS-and one night I still ran away.

I had nothing with me, I needed time to buy a phone and some things. I again turned to one of my friends, who had already hidden once. He allowed him to stop at him. A few days later, a friend called me and said that they had tracked me, the police would be about to come. I knew that this would happen, and did not hesitate anymore. I urgently contacted human rights activists, on their advice I called a taxi and left for a safe place. And then they helped me leave the republic.

I am still afraid that they will find me. I wrote a statement to the prosecutor’s office for the leadership of the rehabilitation center along with the lawyer. I am ready to speak in court and testify, I want them to be responsible for the crimes and harm done.

My parents continue to attempts to find and return me. They deny that they applied violence to me and sent to the clinic to be treated from atheism and bisexuality. I do not keep evil on them, but first of all I think about my safety. In the future, I admit that I will communicate with my sisters and brother. They hate me and support my parents, but for me they are close people. All three are younger. We were constantly together, walked, shared problems. Since I am the eldest, my parents always told me that I give a terrible example to sisters and brother. They threatened that because of me no one would marry my younger sister. And no one will marry my younger brother. In any case, the decision on violence was made by my sisters and brother.

The crisis group helped me a lot. I was given the help of a psychotherapist, I feel great. I want to continue my studies, I really look forward to this opportunity. I am trying to study programming and continue to engage in physics, because over time many theorems and formulas are forgotten. I want to engage in rocket science, develop missile engines for space flight. I ordered a book about rocket science and read it completely.

At the university where I ordered it, I dreamed of acting, but my parents limited my choice to Dagestan or Chechnya. If you can combine physics with astronomy in the future and continue their studies, I will study rocket science.

I am interested in the work of Ilon Mask. I read about him everything that I found. I really look forward to Elon Musk will send an expedition to Mars or at least to the moon. People who agree to this will be heroes and discoverers. They will give their lives for the future. And I understand this desire. Sailors of past centuries traveled to unknown ends of the Earth, realizing that the trip could be the last.

Comment

According to the press secretary of the crisis group of SOS, Alexandra Miroshnikova, the lack of investigation of torture and abductions is explained by the corruption of the system, the general unwillingness to see the problem.

At least two centers in Dagestan are known, where the “treatment” of the clients SK SOS, the “Rakavian alliance” and “start” were held. Information about other similar institutions is checked by human rights activists.

In the North Caucasus, the representative of the organization notes, the whole society and instances work against their applicants - those who suffered for their views, do not recognize religion or attribute themselves to LGBT.

“If in other regions from law enforcement agencies it is difficult to achieve assistance, then in the North Caucasus the whole system will not only be inactive, but also work against human rights activists and applicants,” says Miroshnikova.

The worst of all is the case with the victims of Chechnya. This is the most closed republic, it is more difficult to get out of there, from there the voices of the victims of the system sounds quieter.