16:33, 31 January 2023

Court sides with Chechen woman in her dispute with MIA

In Chechnya, a court granted a claim of Umarai Kusaeva, an 85-year-old victim of the Stalinist deportation, and ordered the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) to issue her a certificate of rehabilitation as a victim of political repression.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that in 2011, in Chechnya, mourning events related to the deportation of the Vainakh people were postponed from February 23 to May 10, the date of the funeral of Akhmat Kadyrov. However, in 2020, on the Defender of the Fatherland Day, a rally in memory of the victims of repression was held in Grozny, in which Ramzan Kadyrov took part.

The day of February 23, 1944, marks a start of the operation, during which almost 500,000 Chechen and Ingush people were evicted from the territory of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. According to various estimates, 10,000 people died on the way, and in the first years after the eviction, other 100,000 people perished. In 1957, the Chechen people began to return to their homeland.

Umarai Kusaeva, an 85-year-old resident of Chechnya, who survived the Stalinist deportation, has succeeded in seeking a document of rehabilitation, the “Kavkaz.Realii”* reports.

According to Umarai Kusaeva, when she was seven years old, she was deported to Kyrgyzstan together with her relatives. There she grew up, married, and gave birth to a son. When the woman applied to the Ministry of Internal Affairs for a certificate of rehabilitation, she was told that the archive contained no information to confirm that she had been a victim of political repression.

*Included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the register of media performing the functions of foreign agents.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on January 29, 2022 at 12:57 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.

Source: Caucasian Knot