The Kadyrovtsy’s Methods
By Sean at 30 August, 2006, 7:20 pm
Since I’m already on the topic of Chechnya, I urge readers to check out C. J. Chivers’ piece in the NY Times on the torture of Malika Soltayeva, a Chechen woman who is suspected of adultery. It seems that Kadyrov’s Chechnya is turning out to be no different than the late Shamil Basaev’s would have been. Here is an excerpt:
Ms. Soltayeva’s own experience, much of which was captured on video, was an accumulation of terror, pain and loss.
She was seized March 19, and mocked throughout a torture session that lasted nearly two hours. “Call for Sergei!” one of the policemen said, using the name of her assumed lover as he beat her. “Sergei! Help!”
Next they told her to dress, and drove her to her husband’s courtyard and made her dance before her neighbors. “Look how ugly you are,” another policeman said.
When she staggered away, several of them kicked her with their heavy black boots. Two days later she miscarried, and has been largely out of public view since.
The episode, which took place five months ago, was not investigated, even though videos showing the torture were passed along on cellphones throughout Argun and other Chechen towns. The videos circulated widely enough that accurate details of her abuse were known by roughly half of the Chechens interviewed by The New York Times.
“It is just outrageous lawlessness,” Ms. Soltayeva said in an interview in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital.
As is common in crumbling marriages, the details of Ms. Soltayeva’s family life and behavior are in dispute. Her former husband’s family says she had an affair with a Russian serviceman she met at a store where she worked as a cashier. She says that she did not, and that she was faithful to her husband even though he beat her.
Her whereabouts in the weeks leading up to her beating are also a source of contention.
Ms. Soltayeva said she was away from home because she had been abducted by masked men who eventually released her, a phenomenon in Chechnya that is common enough that her own family says they believe her. Her husband’s family, and the police, say that she left Chechnya to try to live with her Russian lover, and that she returned when it did not work out.
Natalya Estemirova, a staff member at the Grozny office of Memorial, a private human rights group, said she tried to bring the case to the Chechen authorities, but they threatened Ms. Soltayeva with criminal charges for falsely claiming to have been kidnapped. They showed no interest in the police violence, she said.
Allegations of state-sponsored horrors, and claims that Russian and Chechen officials have allowed servicemen to commit crimes with impunity, have been a regular accompaniment to the Chechen wars.
Human rights groups have documented mass graves, extralegal executions, widespread use and tolerance of torture, illegal detention, rape, robbery and kidnapping.
The Chivers’ article includes other, more violent examples of the kadyrovtsy’s methods.
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Wow, Sean is a true Russian patriot. Kadyrov no bette than Basayev, huh? Solzhentsin (before he went loco) couldn’t have said it any better. Pozdovlyayu! Tseluyu! Better watch out though, you know what happens to such people sweetie.
sean,
the nyt article provided a link to the video you mentioned in your post. to think that this medieval barbarity could still be going on in a country that is at least by dint of geography is european, is mind-boggling. i’m kazakh, and i guess by extension muslim too – although i’ve never seen the inside of a mosque in my life – and for the life of me i would never understand why some people are so hell-bent on the literal interpretation of the scripture, be it the bible, the torah, or in this case, the quran. criminalization of adultery could be justified only by the most slavishly undeviating reading of the quran, and if one takes literally this passage, then slavery is ok, too, then every grown child who doesn’t take care of his parents should be stoned to death, and on and on, which would decimate half the population in some countries. to say nothing of the fact that the torture the poor women endured is not a canonical form of the shari’a punishment. public beheadings are sanctioned by the shari’a law, and so is stoning to death, but head and brow shaving and cross-marking are definitely not. so if somebody wants to play the islamic purist, the least they could do is to bone up on the subject. either way, that human dignity could be se easily trampled upon with absolute impunity in the 21st century, is shuddering.
it is also interesting to note that czar vladimir is falling back on the hallowed by time russian tradition of governing by proxy in the regions. the czars appointed governors and gave them a free reign to plunder and pillage as long as the taxes were collected and the frontiers defended. if that’s not in the same vein, i don’t know what is.
ASTANA: You are making an important and interesting point. If you’d like to write something up in more detail expressing your views I’d gladly run it on my blog, or for all I know Sean would run it on his.
First of all, Islam does not say to humiliate a women, undress her, shave her head and eyebrows, or beat her if she commits adultery. This is totally wrong in Islam. What is happening in Chechnya is that Ramzan has too much power in his hands.
Chechnya was much better when Aslan was president. The now “rebels” or freedom fighters would make better rulers than this Ramzan guy.
Kadyrov is a parasite and it should be noted that as long as he maintains a power structure, the whole of the Caucasus is at risk of a large scale war. What I am refering to his his recent rhetoric regarding the Republic of Georgia which concerns their (Georgia’s) territorial dispute with North Ossetia. This is extremely alarming considering that the US has major interests in Georgia and their territorial integrity. Ramzan is nothing more than a two-bit warlord terrorist and deserves to be recognized internationally as such. He is such the brutal tyrant with a cult of personality that would make an African Dictator’s followers blush. Saying this much one can not help but to sympathize with the rebel movement that is fighting against a man that has systematically humiliated his own unique race of people.