page_title: Chechnya
section_title: Human rights
hierarchical_section_title: Chechnya / Human rights
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Глава Чеченской Республики Рамзан Кадыров во время рабочей встречи с Президентом России Владимиром Путиным
context_page_description: Chechnya, officially the Chechen Republic, is a federal subject of the Russian Federation.
  It is located in the North Caucasus, and within 100 kilometres of the Caspian Sea. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny. As of the 2010 Russian Census, the republic was reported to have a population of 1,268,989 people.
  After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was split into two parts: the Republic of Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic. The latter proclaimed the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which sought independence. Following the First Chechen War with Russia, Chechnya gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Russian federal control was restored during the Second Chechen War. Since then there has been a systematic reconstruction and rebuilding process, though sporadic fighting continued to take place in the mountains and southern regions until 2019.
context_section_description: The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre 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.
  On September 1, 1997, Criminal Code reportedly being implemented in the Chechen Republic-Ichkeriya, Article 148 punishes "anal sexual intercourse between a man and a woman or a man and a man". For first- and second-time offenders, the punishment is caning. A third conviction leads to the death penalty, which can be carried out in a number of ways including stoning or beheading.
  Human rights groups criticised 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.
  On February 1, 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 July 1, 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 destabilisation.
  On March 10, 2011, Human Rights Watch reported that since Chechenisation, 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 [in Chechen society], a wife is a housewife. A woman should know her place. A woman should give her love to us [men]... She would be [man's] 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 honour killings on several occasions.
  On July 9, 2017, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that a number of people were subject to an extrajudicial execution on the night of January 26, 2017. It published 27 names of the people known to be dead, but stressed that the list is "not all [of those killed]"; the newspaper asserted that 50 people may have been killed in the execution. Some of the dead were gay, but not all; the deaths appeared to have been triggered by the death of a policeman, and according to the author of the report, Elena Milashina, were executed for terrorism.
caption: Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in 2018
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