HRC "Memorial": Chechen power agents use militants' relatives as "live shield"

Residents of Chechnya report that relatives of the young men, who went to the forest to join militants, are persecuted by local power agents. Human rights activist note that it happens under the initiative of Chechen leadership, since President Ramzan Kadyrov has openly stated that militants' relatives shall respond for their actions.

One of the latest known cases of such pressure took place on September 3, when at about 3:00 a.m. in the Vedeno District, power agents seized parents of the four militants, who went to the forest back in 2008. The parents were brought to the Vedeno ROVD, where they were threatened and demanded to bring their sons back home. Power agents emphasized that they should detain parents again and again, should they fail to bring their kids back home. This is said in the statement of the HRC "Memorial", which arrived to the "Caucasian Knot".

At about 9:00 a.m., having left militants' mothers in the ROVD, power agents carried fathers to the forest. There, they were scouring the area till the evening, using the detained fathers as "live shield". "They threatened to kill us. To be fair, for me it would be a nice release: I lack brevity to commit suicide," said one of the detainees.

No official comments on these events have been made by power agencies yet.

The HRC emphasizes that instructions to "work with relatives" come down from the leadership of the Chechen Republic. In particular, President Ramzan Kadyrov is openly speaking about responsibility of militants' relatives for actions of their kids. The "Memorial" presents the word-by-word translation of Kadyrov's speech at the meeting with power agents, which was put into the news programme on August 9 by the TV Channel "Grozny", as the proof of the aforesaid.