Human rights defenders associate radicalization of young people in Northern Caucasus with pressure of law enforcers

At the roundtable held in Moscow on June 27-28 and organized by the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" and the newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" with the support of the International Crisis Group (ICG), participants have discussed the reasons for radicalization of young people in Northern Caucasus. According to the activists, the process of radicalization of youth is provoked by unreasonable preventive registration of people at police stations, criminal prosecution, pressure on the Salafi communities, and impunity of law enforcers.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports that Murad Magomedov, an advocate of the HRC "Memorial", says he almost every day meet people preventively registered at police stations in the category of "an extremist, a Wahhabi".

Meanwhile, according to the advocate, people are accidentally included in that list, and the main reason for their registration at the police is their appearance, including presence of a beard and certain clothing.

The advocate has mentioned examples of mass detentions of believers of Salafi mosques in Dagestan.

One of the reasons that prompt young people to join the armed underground is the pressure from law enforcers in case if someone from friends or relatives becomes a member of illegal armed formations (IAFs). This opinion was expressed by Valery Khatazhukov, Chairman of the Kabardino-Balkarian Regional Human Rights Centre.

The radicalization is also provoked by the absence of social mobility and the possibility of self-realization of people, believes Magomed Mutsolgov, the leader 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’.