Chechnya
Human rights

Тhe Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reports that after hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians and Chechens fled their homes following inter-ethnic and separatist conflicts in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, more than 150,000 people still remain displaced in Russia today.

Нuman rights groups criticized the conduct of the 2005 parliamentary elections as unfairly influenced by the central Russian government and military.

In 2006, Human Rights Watch reported that pro-Russian Chechen forces under the command of Ramzan Kadyrov, as well as federal police personnel, used torture to get information about separatist forces. "If you are detained in Chechnya, you face a real and immediate risk of torture. And there is little chance that your torturer will be held accountable", said Holly Cartner, Director of the Europe and Central Asia division of the Human Rights Watch.

In 2009, the US government financed American organization Freedom House included Chechnya in the "Worst of the Worst" list of most repressive societies in the world, together with Burma, North Korea, Tibet, and others. Memorial considers Chechnya under Kadyrov to be a totalitarian regime.

On 1 February 2009, The New York Times released extensive evidence to support allegations of consistent torture and executions under the Kadyrov government. The accusations were sparked by the assassination in Austria of a former Chechen rebel who had gained access to Kadyrov's inner circle, 27-year-old Umar Israilov.

On 1 July 2009, Amnesty International released a detailed report covering the human rights violations committed by the Russian Federation against Chechen citizens. Among the most prominent features was that those abused had no method of redress against assaults, ranging from kidnapping to torture, while those responsible were never held accountable. This led to the conclusion that Chechnya was being ruled without law, being run into further devastating destabilization.

On 10 March 2011, Human Rights Watch reported that since Chechenization, the government has pushed for enforced Islamic dress code. The president Ramzan Kadyrov is quoted as saying "I have the right to criticize my wife. She doesn't. With us, a wife is a housewife. A woman should know her place. A woman should give her love to us... She would be property. And the man is the owner. Here, if a woman does not behave properly, her husband, father, and brother are responsible. According to our tradition, if a woman fools around, her family members kill her... That's how it happens, a brother kills his sister or a husband kills his wife... As a president, I cannot allow for them to kill. So, let women not wear shorts...". He has also openly defended honor killings on several occasions.

On 9 July 2017, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that a number of people were extrajudicially executed on the night of 26 January 2017. It published a list of 27 names of the people known to be dead, but stressed that the list is "not all "; the newspaper asserted that 50 people may have been executed. Some of the dead were gay, but not all. The killings appeared to have been precipitated by the death of a policeman; according to the author of the report, Elena Milashina, the victims were executed for engaging in terrorism.

In December 2021, up to 50 family members of critics of the Kadyrov government were abducted in a wave of mass kidnappings beginning on 22 December.

In a case study published in 2021, Freedom House reported that Kadyrov also conducts a total transnational repression campaign against Chechen exiles outside of Russia, including assassinations of critics and digital intimidation.
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