An exiled Chechen rights lawyer, who along with his family members has faced death threats from Chechen leaders, says he will continue his activities to defend the rights of people of Chechnya, a volatile region in Russia’s North Caucasus.
Abubakar Yangulbayev, formerly a lawyer for the human rights group the Committee Against Torture, told RFE/RL on February 16 that his current activities "are important" for the Chechen people.
"I want to continue rights-defending activities in Chechnya, I want a civil society [to] be established in my republic,” Yangulbayev said, adding that the "enormous pressure" imposed on his family, including the "abduction" of his mother, Zarema Musayeva, last month from her apartment in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, some 1,800 kilometers from Chechnya, is only one example of lawlessness in his native region.
Yangulbayev's mother has been charged with assaulting a police officer and is awaiting trial.
Chechnya's Kremlin-backed authoritarian ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, other Chechen officials, and a member of the Russian parliament’s lower chamber have publicly vowed to kill all members of Yangulbayev's family, calling them "terrorists."
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Journalists, rights activists, and ordinary citizens across Russia have urged the government to take legal measures over the threatening statements.
Yangulbayev, who recently left Georgia for an unspecified country after Georgian authorities warned him that he was being followed, said he was not surprised that Kadyrov's law enforcement and security officers could go to Nizhny Novgorod to act with "the same lawlessness that they do on a daily basis in Chechnya."
Kadyrov stands behind his security officers, while Russian President Vladimir Putin stands behind Kadyrov, he said.
“Meanwhile, nobody protects an ordinary police officer in Nizhny Novgorod. I do not believe that Russia's federal law enforcement can do anything against Kadyrov's law enforcement system. Because it was Putin who created Kadyrov's system and that is why he protects it,” Yangulbayev said.
Yangulbayev added that he and his brother Ibragim, who also resides abroad, had started facing pressure from Kadyrov's people several years ago over online criticism of Kadyrov and the rights situation in Chechnya.
Yangulbayev added that many of his relatives have been under pressure in Chechnya and even deprived of their homes since Kadyrov and his people vowed to kill him and all members of his family. His father, retired federal Judge Saidi Yangulbayev, and sister had to flee Russia last month following the threats.
Russian and international human rights groups have for years accused Kadyrov of overseeing grave human rights abuses, including abductions, torture, extrajudicial killings, and the persecution of the LGBT community. Kremlin critics say Putin has turned a blind eye to the abuses because he relies on the former rebel commander to control separatist sentiment and violence in Chechnya.
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Yangulbayev emphasized that to change the situation in Chechnya it is necessary to look into what happened during and after two devastating post-Soviet wars in the region that led to an Islamist insurgency, which spread to other mostly Muslim regions in the North Caucasus.
Both Chechens and Russians “must negotiate, talk about all topical important political, historic, social issues, the issues of justice. To decide who must be held responsible and who should not, who can be defined as a hero and who cannot. It is important to reach an agreement," Yangulbayev said.