A rally against the repressions of Chechen women by the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov was held in front of the Russian embassy in the capital of Belgium. Its participants were representatives of the Europe-based Ichkerian political movement “United Force”.
The rally participants held photographs of Zarema Musayeva, the mother of the opposition Yangulbayev brothers, convicted in Chechnya, Amina Okuyeva, a member of the Chechen battalion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces killed in Ukraine in 2017, and human rights activist and journalist Natalya Estemirova, who was kidnapped and killed in 2009 in Grozny. The rally participants held a poster with a portrait of Kadyrov and the caption “Killer of Chechen women.”
Speaking at the rally, United Force representative Fatima Suleimanova listed the names of women – relatives of the Ichkeria leaders, who were persecuted by the federals and Kadyrovites in the 2000s. She and other speakers addressed the audience in French and Russian. The final resolution of the action was sent to the embassy.
- The “Team Against Torture” has appealed to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Russia, Mariana Katsarova, with a request to send the authorities a request about the health of the Chechen political prisoner Zarema Musayeva and the new criminal case against her.
- In January 2022, Musayeva was kidnapped from her apartment in Nizhny Novgorod. In Grozny, she was first sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest for insulting a police officer. Then a criminal case was opened: she allegedly attacked the district police officer who was drawing up the report. Later, Zarema Musayeva was charged with fraud. Last July, the court sentenced Musayeva to five and a half years in a general regime penal colony; the term was later reduced by six months, and the regime was replaced with a penal colony. She was denied parole twice.
- Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov threatened the Yangulbayev family with violence the day after Musayeva was kidnapped. He soon repeated the threats in a video message. High-ranking Chechen security officials and officials joined in the threats, and a rally against the Yangulbayev family was held in the centre of Grozny, where their portraits were burned, trampled, and torn.
