The Russian authorities should respond to the statement of the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, who called the journalist of Novaya Gazeta Elena Milashina and a member of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation (HRC) Igor Kalyapin terrorists, said on Monday, January 24, the head of the HRC commission on freedom of information and rights journalists, chairman of the Union of Journalists of Moscow (SZhM) and editor-in-chief of Moskovsky Komsomolets Pavel Gusev.
In an interview with Interfax, Gusev stressed that the heads of regions have the right to make any statements within their powers, but the silence of the federal authorities is surprising. “I regard this as a kind of fear and unwillingness to intervene in a situation that has already gone too far,” the head of the SJM said, calling the silence of the authorities a “very bad sign” that the authorities are either afraid of “this person” or do not want to resolve issues themselves and give them “into the hands of such heads of regions as Kadyrov.”
According to Pavel Gusev, the dangerous statements of the head of Chechnya, “feeling absolutely unpunished,” could endanger the health and life of Kalyapin and Milashina.
Head of HRC: evidence base is needed for accusations
In turn, the chairman of the Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeev, said that for the accusations of terrorism, with which Kadyrov made against the member of the Kalyapin Council, weighty grounds and a serious evidence base are needed. “I would like to draw attention to the fact that Igor Kalyapin is a member of the presidential council, an advisory body to the head of state. He was appointed to this position by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, and, as you know, such appointments are necessarily accompanied by appropriate checks,” he said. head of the council.
The Kremlin distanced itself from Kadyrov’s statements
The press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov, commenting at a press conference on the statements of the head of Chechnya, said that this is Kadyrov’s personal opinion, and only a court can recognize citizens as de jure terrorists. “As far as we know, there have been no such confessions and there are none at the present time,” Peskov said. “If there are direct threats from Kadyrov against a member of the HRC and a journalist, then we need to figure it out, these people have the right to defend their reputation in court.”
On the evening of January 23, Kadyrov wrote on Telegram that human rights activist Igor Kalyapin and journalist Yelena Milashina are terrorists “who make money on the topic of the Chechen Republic and Chechens, developing scripts and whispering texts and behavior into the ears of their characters.” He urged law enforcement agencies to detain “these accomplices of terrorists”, arguing that “the evidence base is in the materials of journalistic investigations on independent channels.”
In the same Telegram post, the head of Chechnya again threatened the former judge of the Supreme Court of Chechnya, Saydi Yangulbaev, and his family members, threatening to kill them “according to the law” if they “resist.”
Persecution of the Yangulbaev family
On January 20, unidentified persons, who introduced themselves as police officers, broke into the ex-judge’s apartment and presented a decision to bring Yangulbaev and his wife Zarema Musaeva to Chechnya as witnesses in a fraud case. Yangulbaev showed the judge’s certificate, after which the unknown took away only Musaeva, beating her together with her husband.
Later, Ramzan Kadyrov said that she was taken to Grozny, where she allegedly attacked a police officer. “That is, they staged a provocation to legalize the abduction of my mother. Now there will definitely be a trial because of the “attack on a policeman, dangerous to his life and health,” Abubakar Yangulbaev, the son of Yangulbaev and Musaeva, a lawyer for the Committee against Torture, commented on the situation in an interview with DW. .
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