Hidden Crisis: The Untold Struggles of Displaced Chechens Under Russian Rule
Hidden Crisis: The Untold Struggles of Displaced Chechens Under Russian Rule
Deep Dive with Ali 🎙️💬
In this episode Ali discusses the Chechnyan experience. He is a student journalist with us on a placement organised by the Oxford University Career Services. This article was edited using the Lex.page editor.
🎧 listen to Ali's backstory here - she discusses her motivation & research as well.
A Displaced and Disappearing People – Human rights within Russian-controlled Chechnya
The exceptional thing about the Chechen people is how their suppression has been made invisible by external forces at the turn of the 21st century. Chechnya is in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea and bordering Georgia from the northeast. Chechnya has been under the authority of the federal Russian government since the dissolution of the USSR and a brief civil interlude of independence during the Chechen Wars. However, after the Second Chechen War that lasted between 1999 and 2009, the human rights violations in Chechnya on the Chechen people have become more severe and less internationally recognised in the 2010s and 2020s.
In post-war Chechnya, ongoing trauma since the relative peace after the Second Chechen War. The aftermath has seen over a decade of violence, human rights abuses, criminality, poverty, and thousands of displaced or missing civilians, in a climate of impunity. The conflict resulted in around 260,000 Chechens being displaced to neighbouring Ingushetia. Most of them found shelter in tent camps and collective squats, or spontaneous settlements like sheds, wagons, factories, etc. which can’t be classified as homes or living spaces.
Human rights abuse factors into the struggle of the displaced Chechen population because of government pressure for ‘Repatriation'. The Ingushetian and Russian governments are pressuring the displaced Chechen population to return to war-torn Chechnya. This constitutes a human rights violation due to the physical, psychological, and administrative harassment, deliberate cutting-off of basic services, and intense propaganda about imminent camp closures. This compels people to return to Chechnya, despite the lack of confirmation of proper shelter and health services. (Read more here: https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/eca/chechnya0305/7.htm)
This was the resettlement period before the ‘Chechen revival.’ By 2007, most displaced Chechens had returned home, forcefully or otherwise. Chechnya’s capital, Grozny (hardest hit during the conflict), was rebuilt quickly and paid for by Moscow. This might indicate a new chapter for the Chechens, but this isn’t the case, for several reasons.
The ongoing oversight of human rights in Chechnya during the post-war resettlement of Chechens is linked to Ramzan Kadyrov, the current Head of the Chechen Republic under Vladimir Putin.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the son of former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, switched sides in the Second Chechen War to serve Putin’s administration in Russia. He became Chechen president in 2003. In 2007, he replaced others in his position after violent power struggles. Kadyrov employs totalitarian tactics in his rule of the Chechen Republic, asserting his authority. He has faced criticism from international organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW) for human rights abuses, including forced disappearances and torture of dissenters.
During his tenure, Kadyrov has advocated restricting women's public lives and led anti-gay purges in the Republic. This involved forced disappearances, secret abductions, imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial killing. At least 2 out of 100 detained on suspicion of being gay have reportedly died after being held in what human rights groups and journalists (including Novaya Gazeta, the Russian-language opposition newspaper, have gone into hiding) have called concentration camps in 2017.
Blaming Ramzan Kadyrov as the sole cause of Chechnya’s post-war human rights struggles may be wrong. He is a single individual acting on an authority above himself, but he plays a large part in the human rights violations of Chechnya today and conceals their existence from an international audience, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The prolonged abuse of human rights in Chechnya has become more hushed following the end of the Second Chechen War, the reasserted authority of the federal Russian government, and Kadyrov coming into power. There is a general impression that life in Chechnya has returned to a normal, habitable standard after the rebuilding of Grozny, the capital, and the ‘Repatriation’ of the displaced Chechens from neighbouring Russian republics in the post-war period. Under Kadyrov’s totalitarian administration, which takes extrajudicial punitive action against human rights supporters, journalists, and ethnic minorities, this is far from the truth.
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