Sirazhudinova notes favourable attitude towards “honour killings” in Chechnya

In Dagestan and Ingushetia, officials try to hide data on “honour killings” by removing the information about such cases from court’s official websites. In Chechnya, citing a woman’s immoral behaviour as a motive for murder helps to obtain a more lenient punishment, human rights defender Saida Sirazhudinova has noted when commenting on the results of a study on domestic violence in Northern Caucasus.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that Saida Sirazhudinova, the president of the Centre for the Study of Global Issues of Contemporary and Regional Problems “Caucasus. World. Development”, released the report entitled “Domestic Violence in Northern Caucasus: a report on results of monitoring the situation in the region and analysis of judicial practice.” According to the report, in Chechnya, “honour killings” are the dominant motive for killings of women: out of 31 convictions for the murders of women, 22 murders were committed on the basis of “honour killing”.

The most complete information on “honour killings” is available for Chechnya only, reports Saida Sirazhudinova.

“Only two cases were deleted from the official websites of the republic’s courts, and most of the cases remain reported on websites. But in Ingushetia and Dagestan, the courts’ websites have been cleaned up. Chechen officials probably ignore the comments of human rights defenders. And in Dagestan and Ingushetia, they decided not to post new sentences in such cases and erased a significant part of the previous sentences from the courts’ websites,” the human rights defender believes.

Therefore, it is impossible to collect reliable statistics on “honour killings” in Dagestan and Ingushetia, Saida Sirazhudinova emphasizes.

According to her, in Chechnya, in principle, there is almost no threat of violence against women from strangers. “Apparently because there is a tradition of blood feud, especially for a murder of a woman,” the human rights defender states.