Young victim of videoed torture still missing

Telegram channel (chat) 1ADAT was set up in early March 2020 and the number of its subscribers rapidly grew to several thousand. It publishes information about human rights violations, including abductions and unlawful detentions, in Chechnya, as well as satirical sketches about Chechen officials. The channel has several administrators who remain anonymous and call themselves a “people’s movement” and “warriors against Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime”. 

According to the independent Russian Novaya Gazeta newspaper, the Chechen authorities have been attempting to identify the channel’s creators, administrators and contributing authors – most of whom are believed to be located in Chechnya – since May. Due to the security measures taken by the channel administrators, the authorities’ attempts were unsuccessful until Salman Tepsurkaev compromised his anonymity by disclosing his personal details to a likely undercover law enforcement official. 

Under the leadership of Kremlin-appointed Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya is the place where numerous human rights violations are being committed, with virtually total impunity for their perpetrators, and free speech has been brutally suppressed for years. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have documented multiple instances when critics of the regime, including human rights defenders, journalists and bloggers, have been prosecuted and imprisoned under fabricated criminal charges, or abducted and killed. Members of the general public who dare to criticise Ramzan Kadyrov, members of his administration, his relatives or associates, or complain about local problems such as the closure of a hospital, or even ask for help in ways which reflect negatively on Chechnya (for instance, ask for help to provide for a large family), are often being forced to humiliate themselves in front of a camera and publicly “apologise” for their actions, which is recorded and then broadcast on the local television or via social media. This practice has been widely used since 2015. Thus, in December 2015 a local man was filmed apologising for having criticised Ramzan Kadyrov and pledging loyalty to the Chechen authorities, with his trousers dropped down. 

Ramzan Kadyrov’s critics are not safe abroad either, and numerous suspicious attacks and assassinations which appear to have been instigated from Chechnya, have been reported. For instance, on 13 January 2009, former Ramzan Kadyrov’s bodyguard and later public critic, Umar Israilov, whose testimony directly implicated the Chechen leader in torture and other human rights violations, was shot and killed in Vienna, Austria. On 1 February 2020, the body of Chechen blogger Imran Aliev (alias “Mansur the Old”), was found in Lille, France. On 4 July 2020, blogger Mamikhan Umarov was shot dead in the suburbs of Vienna. Both bloggers were ardent critics of Kadyrov and his regime. On 26 February 2020, another popular blogger and critic of Kadyrov’s regime, Tumso Abdurakhmanov who lives in exile in one of the European countries, was attacked with a hammer by an intruder while sleeping in his flat. He managed to overpower his attacker and survived