Chechnya (Russia)

“There is every reason to believe that Chechen authorities are behind this vile attack,” said Human Rights Watch. “For more than a decade, they have been wielding a war on human rights defenders, jailing them, destroying their offices, and forcing them to leave Chechnya.”

Police in Chechnya have carried out a new round of unlawfuldetentions, beatings, and humiliation of men they presume to be gay orbisexual.

In 2016, a group of masked men attacked a minibus carrying journalists and human rights activists; several of the journalists were hospitalised and their vehicle and equipment were destroyed. No suspects have ever been identified.

The director of rights group Memorial is the latest activist to be targeted on dubious drug charges.

Members of PACE were urged to fully support the adoption of a resolution that renews the Council of Europe’s attention and reporting on the dramatic human rights situation in the Northern Caucasus.

“Novaya Gazeta” said it feared for the safety of its reporters after Muslim preachers threatened retaliation and an advisor to the Chechen President said there are no gay people in Chechnya.

Security forces rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being gay, torturing and humiliating the victims. Three of them have reportedly died.

RSF deplores the decision by Chechnya’s supreme court to confirm the three-year jail sentence that the young journalist Zhalaudi Geriyev received in September 2016 on a clearly trumped-up charge of drug possession.

On 3 June 2015, an aggressive mob smashed a car belonging to the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of human rights organizations in Chechnya and broke into the group’s office in Grozny, destroying it and its contents.

The organisation will host mirror sites of the Sri Lankan online newspaper Lanka-e-News and the Chechen magazine Dosh.

Supyan Baskhanov, who runs the Committee against Torture’s Grozny office, was warned that the police were planning to accuse him of collaborating with insurgents.

The Chechen ombudsman alleged that the human rights organisation Memorial has been using facts about rights violations to “destabilise” the situation in Chechnya.

Russian authorities need to take immediate steps to guarantee the safety of human rights defenders in Chechnya, Human Rights Watch said.

Another non-governmental activist and her husband have been abducted and killed in Chechnya, where independent voices continue to be ruthlessly silenced.