Chechen SC finds refusal to investigate abduction of queer girl legitimate

The Supreme Court (SC) of Chechnya has found legitimate the investigator's refusal to investigate the girl's abduction by her relatives, from whom she tried to hide, the Russian LGBT Network* has informed. The girl asserted that her family had learned about her sexual orientation; and her life was in danger.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in September 2019, public organizations noted that problems of women's powerlessness and domestic violence were growing up in the Chechen society. According to activists, in Chechnya, Dagestan and Karachay-Cherkessia, the number of complaints received from domestic violence victims is growing every year.

In August 2020, a girl from Grozny asked human rights defenders to help her leave the republic. According to her story, her father, having learned about her sexual orientation, left the European Union for Chechnya for "execution."

Rights defenders helped the girl to leave the house, but her relatives wrote an application about abduction. Three days later, law enforcers broke into the shelter, where the girl was hiding with volunteers. All those in the shelter were taken to a Grozny police station. After interrogation, her relatives took her away to some unknown place. The women who had helped the girl said that they were beaten and tortured with electric current for three days.

On September 8, 2020, David Isteev, the head of the "Emergency Help" programme of the Russian LGBT Network*, submitted a complaint on the fact of the girl's abduction by law enforcers to the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF); however, the latter refused to conduct a check.

In the opinion of Veronika Lapina, a human rights defender, Chechnya faces "pathological situation" with LGBT people's rights. "Relatives are not only unprepared to be complainants, but they themselves violate human rights," she has stated.