Reporter Elena Milashina cancels plans to travel to Chechnya, rebukes Russian human rights NGO for revealing her intent to go to Grozny
Elena Milashina, veteran reporter for Russia’s liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, had to cancel her plans to travel to Grozny after they’d been publicized by the human-rights NGO Team Against Torture (also known as Committee Against Torture).
How Milashina’s plans became known
In a column published in Novaya Gazeta, Milashina writes that she no longer plans to attend the appeal hearing on the case of Zarema Musayeva, scheduled to take place at the Chechen Supreme Court on September 12.
Milashina says that she had to cancel her travel plans after the Telegram channel run by Team Against Torture revealed them without her consent.
Why does this matter?
“Regrettably, the activists working for Team Against Torture didn’t ask me for permission to publicize information that concerns my work and my safety,” Milashina announced, blaming the same NGO’s irresponsible publicity for the 2016 attack on the journalists and human rights activists who tried to cross the Chechnya–Ingushetia border by bus.
“I thought at the time, and I still do, that the responsibility for what happened in March 2016 rests not only on those who commissioned and executed the attack, but also on Committee Against Torture,” the reporter concludes.
Who is that?
Zarema Musayeva is the wife of a retired Chechen Supreme Court judge Saidi Yangulbayev. Their three sons, Abubakar, Ibragim, and Baisangur Yangulbayev, are all prominent human rights activists and critics of Ramzan Kadyrov’s government. After being abducted in Russia and put on trial in Chechnya, Musayeva was sentenced to 5.5 years in a penal colony in July 2023. The court found her guilty of fraud and using violence against a policeman. Committee Against Torture insists that Musayeva is completely innocent, and that her chronic medical conditions are incompatible with serving time in prison.