Human rights defenders report data on practice of false vaccination in Chechnya

The coronavirus immunization campaign, which in Chechnya has been accompanied by harsh coercion to vaccinate, has led to a wide spread of fake vaccination certificates, the Human Rights Centre (HRC) “Memorial”* reported.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on August 18, Chechnya entered the top five Russian regions leading in terms of the proportion of the fully vaccinated population. On October 3, the Ministry for Public Health of Chechnya reported on the implementation of the vaccination plan by 87%.

In Russia, the mass vaccination campaign in June-August “was not particularly successful anywhere, and in Northern Caucasus, the rate of vaccination was almost the lowest among the regions of Russia,” the press service for the HRC “Memorial”* reported.

A feature of the campaign in Chechnya was the harsh compulsion to receive vaccinations, although no formally mandatory vaccination was announced in the region, human rights defenders note.

Students without vaccination certificates were not allowed to attend classes, enterprise managers demanded vaccination certificates from their employees under the threat of dismissal, and in cafes, visitors were refused in service. Meanwhile, confirmed contraindications to vaccination were ignored.

Mistrust in the authorities and harsh coercion to vaccinate “naturally gave rise to a market for false vaccination and fake vaccination certificates,” human rights defenders say.

According to them, the practice of false vaccination carries several threats. “Firstly, there is a squandering of the vaccines, and back in the summer, the republics of Northern Caucasus faced a shortage of the vaccines. Secondly, the statistics are distorted not in favour of vaccination, since a falsely vaccinated person does not differ from an unvaccinated person in terms of the likelihood of being infected,” the human rights defenders state.

The organization is included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in the register of NCOs performing the functions of a foreign agent.