‘People go just to hear a kind word’ The rise of ‘witch hunts’ against healers and fortune tellers in Chechnya
In recent years, two parallel processes have been unfolding in Chechnya. On one hand, the local authorities have pushed for a revival of “Islamic values,” publicly displaying their religious devotion. At the same time, they’ve cracked down on residents engaging in “unconventional” practices, such as consulting healers, sorcerers, and fortune-tellers. While Islam officially condemns the occult, it also doesn’t endorse the public humiliations that are routinely inflicted on people accused of “witchcraft” in the republic, according to sources who spoke to RFE/RL’s Kavkaz.Realii. Meduza shares a translation of the outlet’s report on the growing repression of these practices in Chechnya.
One of the focal points in the Chechen authorities’ fight against occult practices has been an institution called the Center for Islamic Medicine, established in Grozny in 2009 by an order from Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov. According to the center’s director, Daud Elmurzayev, it was created to “protect residents from charlatans and fraudsters.”
Over the 16 years it’s been operating, the center has reportedly treated around 700,000 people — roughly half of Chechnya’s population. It provides traditional Islamic medical services, including hijama (cupping) and exorcisms. However, it’s gained the most notoriety for its crackdown on sorcerers, fortunate-tellers, and folk healers — a campaign many in the republic have referred to as a witch hunt.
Since 2013, the local state TV channel ChGTRK Grozny has aired regular segments in which alleged occult practitioners apologize on cameras, often following “educational conversations” led by the center’s chief specialist, Adam Elzhurkaev. In Chechnya, he is considered part of Kadyrov’s inner circle. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has criticized these “humiliating video confessions.”
Public apologies
One of these “confessions” aired on state TV in 2023, after police in Grozny detained a local woman named Roza Tsaraliyeva on charges of practicing occultism. Tsaraliyeva and her two daughters were publicly scolded on camera by Adam Elzhurkaev. According to the broadcast, neighbors had reported Tsaraliyeva to law enforcement. Acting on the tip, police searched her apartment, where they allegedly found “witchcraft-related items” and a client list. The segment claimed that officers had “no difficulty” tracking these people down.
In December 2022, the same state media outlet reported the detention of 80-year-old Roza Gastiyeva, accused of reading fortunes with playing cards and supposedly communicating with the spirit of a Christian monk who had died a century earlier.
A year earlier, in December 2021, three Chechen women — Kheda Dangalova, Kheda Ismailova, and Kometa Ismurzayeva — were detained. They were accused of collecting water and stones from “sacred places,” leaving small bundles of salt in courtyards, and using books of love spells. In the broadcast, Elzhurkaev claimed he had received “numerous complaints” about the women via Instagram.
Exactly how authorities identify suspected “witches” remains unclear, but according to Salman, a Grozny resident, it isn’t difficult for them: “In a small republic where everyone knows everyone, it’s impossible to hide. Sometimes officers even send undercover clients to fortune-tellers with hidden cameras.”
Previously, these “witch hunts” primarily targeted women, but men are increasingly being caught up in them as well, according to an employee of a Chechen civil society organization working on gender issues, who spoke anonymously. “Everyone knows it’s a scam, but sometimes people go just to hear a kind word, to find hope. Most of those who end up in Elzhurkaev’s ‘re-education’ sessions are there because someone reported them.”
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Both the accused and their clients are forced to apologize. One such case involved Said-Akhmet Atayev, who sought a “witch’s” help to win back his wife. He traveled to Makhachkala with a friend for this purpose, yet somehow, Chechen authorities still found out.
Another incident occurred in February 2022, when state media aired a report about two residents of the Chechen village of Engel-Yurt — one trying to reconcile with his wife, the other seeking to “reform” his daughter, who had embraced a secular lifestyle. Both had turned to a healer in neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria for help.
In 2022, North Ossetian fortune-teller Rima Gagloyeva disappeared while traveling from an airport in Chechnya. Her nephew, MMA fighter Georgy Gagloyev, accused Grozny’s security forces of abducting her as part of the broader crackdown on fortune-tellers. According to him, his aunt had “removed the evil eye.” In February 2023, Gagloyev was found dead in a train car traveling from Moscow to Vladikavkaz.
‘We don’t know what happens off-camera’
Islam forbids witchcraft, considering it one of the gravest sins, but it also prohibits the humiliation of individuals, according to an Islamic scholar from Chechnya who spoke anonymously to Kavkaz.Realii. “Besides, we don’t know what happens off-camera in these so-called exposés,” he noted.
For his part, Adam Elzhurkaev has previously said that law enforcement actions against suspected occult practitioners “comply with Russian law” and has likened fortune-telling rituals to terrorism.
Occult practices are indeed widely condemned in Chechnya, a staff member of a local civil society organization notes. “But at the same time, public punishments and forced apologies — now a routine part of life in the republic — are hardly viewed as acceptable either,” she says.
She adds, “[Even] officials themselves turn to fortune-tellers and sorcerers. We all remember the case when Akhmed Abastov, the head of the Gudermes district, asked a healer to ‘influence’ Ramzan Kadyrov and make him a minister.” But as with many issues of “tradition” in Chechnya, there’s a serious double standard for elites and ordinary people.