In Chechnya, state television showed a girl fleeing domestic violence

Mansur Soltaev, the Commissioner for Human Rights in Chechnya, said that he met Selima Ismailova, a 20-year-old Chechen woman who was trying to escape domestic violence. Their conversation was shown on the republican TV channel. In the video, Ismailova says that everything is fine with her and asks to leave her and her family alone. Human rights activists believe that they could have forced her to do it.

Soltaev said that now psychologists worked on Ismailova and “her thinking”, and the human rights activists who helped her escape were allegedly recognized as “agents of the West” and tried to discredit the Caucasus.

“She is in very good condition, nothing threatens her, she can move freely, she has a telephone, she communicates with relatives. Now Selima is with her grandmother, sister and father – her father loves her very much, she also loves her father, brothers very much and sisters,” says Soltaev.

“Such examples have been seen many times – these are the stories of Luiza Dudurkaeva, Halimat Taramova, Leyla Gireeva from Ingushetia and other girls returned to Chechnya,” Svetlana Anokhina, the founder of the human rights project “Marem”, recalled in a comment on the website Kavkaz.Realii.

“If a person is held hostage, he will smile and say that everything is fine with him. When was it different? But let them explain to us then where the case of the theft, for which Selima was actually detained? If this is a false accusation, why is no one punished for this,” the human rights activist notes.

With the help of human rights activists, Selima Ismailova ran away from home in Chechnya and tried to fly to Germany. Ismailova spoke about the beatings by her father and that he promised to “break all her bones.” On June 12, she was detained at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and handed over to the Chechen police. Since then, her whereabouts have not been reported.

• Domestic violence is one of the systemic problems of the North Caucasus. Local residents are subjected to it by their husbands and other family members. As a rule, the police ignore such cases, and in the case of criminal cases, the courts impose minimal punishments.
• Over the past ten years, draft laws on the prevention of domestic violence have been submitted to the State Duma more than 40 times, but have not passed a single reading. In 2017, the article on beatings was removed from the Russian Criminal Code, and administrative responsibility was introduced for domestic violence.