'A perfect breeding ground for radicalization' How collective punishment became the norm in Kadyrov's Chechnya

Original story by Andrey Krasno from Kavkaz.Realii. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale.

On November 21, a 19-year-old Chechen man named Movsar Zakriyev fatally stabbed a police officer in Grozny and was shot by other officers soon thereafter. The Telegram channel Baza later published audio messages in which a voice attributed to Zakriyev describes plans to wage a “holy war” against “infidels,” along with photos of Zakriyev holding the flag of the Islamic State, though anomalies in the photo suggest it may have been photoshopped. After the incident, Chechen authorities arrested about 20 of Zakriyev’s relatives in the village of Aldy, according to multiple Chechen opposition Telegram channels and the Chechen human rights group Vayfond. A new report from RFE/RL’s North Caucasus service, Kavkaz.Realii, outlines the Chechen authorities’ history of targeting family members of alleged criminals — a practice that first became widely used under Ramzan Kadyrov’s father and predecessor. In English, Meduza is publishing an abridged version of the story.

Impunity for officers, indignities for the innocent

According to human rights defender Igor Kalyapin, security forces in the North Caucasus abduct relatives of suspected militants for a simple reason: it’s effective.

“On the whole, nobody in our country is interested in the issue of legality. If [a policy] gets results, and if the people in charge are convinced it’s beneficial, they’ll flagrantly disregard the laws. They won’t even think about them for a minute,” he told Kavkaz.Realii.

The tactic of targeting a person’s family members is largely specific to the Kadyrov administration, Kalyapin said, though federal Russian authorities are responsible for turning a blind eye and allowing it to go on.

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One of the tamer examples of the practice took place after an attack against police officers in Grozny in 2016, when Chechen authorities organized a rally against Islamic extremism but claimed it was an initiative led by the attackers' families. At the event, participants told journalists that they didn’t want to be spending their weekend in Grozny but that they had received text messages from their bosses saying they were required to attend the rally.

Other relatives of alleged militants have faced more serious repressions. In January 2017, attendees of “people’s councils” in the village of Tsotsin-Yurt and the town of Shali ruled that the families of alleged terrorists should be expelled not just from their hometowns but from the entire Chechen Republic. Then, several weeks later, after two police officers were killed in another attack, numerous relatives of the alleged perpetrators in that incident were arrested.

The list goes on. After two brothers attacked a National Guard unit in Grozny in March 2017, authorities arrested their father and other relatives. The practice of targeting innocent family members has even spread to Chechnya’s neighboring Dagestan: in October 2017, security officials blew up the homes of three suspected militants in the republic's Kizlyarsky District and left photos of two of the men’s corpses hanging on a nearby gate.

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Ramzan Kadyrov didn’t invent the practice of punishing the relatives of suspected militants, but he has taken it to new levels. In 2004, his father and predecessor, Akhmat Kadyrov, went as far as to say that militants’ neighbors, not just their relatives, shared responsibility for their crimes. That same year, Chechen authorities burned down the homes of two families whose children fought on the side of Chechen independence.

In late 2014, after a group of militants attacked Grozny, Ramzan Kadyrov announced that one of the suspects’ families would “immediately be expelled from Chechnya with no right to return” and that their home would be “demolished along with its foundation.” In the weeks that followed, at least seven homes belonging to relatives of the alleged attackers were destroyed; some were burned, while at least one was razed by a bulldozer.

Scared into silence

Around 2004, Chechen authorities started rounding up not just the relatives of dead militants but also the family members of guerrilla fighters hiding in the forest and mountains, according to Oleg Orlov, a human rights defender with Memorial. Holding the relatives hostage, authorities would use them as leverage to convince militants to lay down their weapons.

“It was effective. People [...] had no other options left, [so] they became Kadyrovites,” said Orlov.

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At the same time, the abductions of militants’ relatives are difficult for human rights advocates to investigate, because a lot of details aren’t made public, said Memorial’s Galina Tarasova.

“Federal supervisory agencies turn a blind eye to a lot of what goes on in Chechnya. Most issues are effectively outsourced to Kadyrov and his circle,” Tatrasova told Kavkaz.Realii. She added that NGOs can only gain access to “terrorism” cases through lawyers or through defendants’ relatives, and even then, only if those people reach out to the organizations for help.

Often, however, victims of these repressions are reluctant to advocate publicly for their rights because of the risks that can bring, according to Albert Kuznetsov, a lawyer with the organization Committee Against Torture. This result, he said, is a vicious circle.

“In the republics, information spreads fairly quickly; people hear a lot about cases of law enforcement agents abusing power, while there are practically no stories of [corrupt authorities being] punished. So they end up with the impression that the law doesn’t work. Human rights defenders provide assistance through the legal system, but if the law itself and its realization leaves people disappointed, they won’t reach out to human rights defenders. And that’s their right,” he said.

According to official statistics, Kuznetsov told Kavkaz.Realii, only eight security officials have been sentenced for using violence in the last four years — and all eight of the cases involved military units.

“Why is that the case? Chechen security officials are either not committing crimes or they’re not being punished. Judging by the fact that reports of these incidents appear regularly in the media, we can assume it’s the second one. People see that, so they’re not keen on reaching out to law enforcement and human rights organizations for help. Thus, they have no legal recourse. The result is a perfect breeding ground for radicalization,” said Kuznetsov.