HRW: 2015 was a hard year for rights defenders, journalists and lawyers in Northern Caucasus

In 2015, in Northern Caucasus, power agents kept putting pressure on Salafis, while rights defenders were harassed, states the Human Rights Watch (HRW) in the Russian chapter of its report on the human rights situation.

This situation in the regions of the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD) remains stably grave, the Russian experts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" stated earlier.

The HRW's report states that Russia has seen an increase in attacks on human rights. It mentions the confrontation of power agencies with the armed underground in Northern Caucasus, as well as incidents with rights defenders in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia.

The armed conflict is still accompanied by human rights violations, state the researchers, citing, in particular, frequent detentions of Salafis in Dagestan, putting them on a special police records and fabrication of many criminal cases.

They also note that last year in Northern Caucasus was very adverse for rights defenders, independent journalists and lawyers.

Among the incidents that caused concern they mention the beating of February 4, 2015, in Makhachkala, of the lawyer Murad Magomedov, who defended one of the figurants of the trial on the explosion in the house of Sheikh Saeed of Chirkey, pogrom of the office of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of Russian human rights organizations in Grozny, as well as on the searches of the house and office of Magomed Mutsolgov, the head of the Ingush human rights organization "Mashr".

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.