Chechen Human Rights Commissioner urges compatriots to return from Europe

Chechen Human Rights Commissioner Mansur Soltaev has appealed to members of the Chechen diaspora living in European countries, urging them to return to their homeland and raise their children in Chechnya. According to Soltaev, children from Chechen families in the West are being subjected to ‘foreign values’ and are prevented from preserving their own culture.

‘The best place to raise children in the spirit of their own culture and traditions is their native land,’ Soltaev wrote on the Russian social media platform Vkontakte on Thursday.

He noted that he increasingly receives messages from Chechens abroad complaining about pressure from local authorities regarding how they raise their children. In particular, he highlighted cases where European child welfare services allegedly removed children from Chechen families for adhering to religious and cultural customs.

‘Children are taken away, sent to strangers, families are destroyed, and our little ones are deprived of their right to know their native language, traditions, faith, and even their parents’, Soltaev said.

He described such practices as ‘a direct violation of human rights’.

‘There is no better place where Chechen children can truly grow up as Chechens than in Chechnya’, Soltaev concluded.

In a number of countries — including Norway, Germany, and France — there have been documented cases of children being removed from migrant families, including Chechens. However, such actions typically occur in situations involving serious concerns, such as abuse, neglect, or risks to the child’s wellbeing.

In recent years, Chechen authorities have repeatedly criticised opposition figures, human rights activists, and former allies of Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov who have moved abroad. Some of these individuals have been placed on wanted lists, while their relatives in Chechnya have reportedly faced pressure — including public apologies filmed on camera, their houses being burned, and travel bans.

Within the diaspora in Europe, there have also been instances where some Chechens have dictated how others should behave — often in aggressive or threatening ways. In 2021, five Chechens in Austria were prosecuted for harassing Chechen women in Vienna, demanding that they live according to Chechen traditions and Islamic norms. According to investigators, the men formed a criminal group functioning as a kind of ‘morality police’. They were all sentenced to short prison terms.

Similar reports of such ‘guardians of morality’ have emerged from several German cities, where victims of assaults are often afraid to go to the police, fearing retaliation.

Also in 2021, in the Belgian city of Namur, a 15-year-old boy, reportedly not a Chechen, was seriously beaten by five Chechens, two of whom were minors. The attackers filmed the assault, which lasted nearly an hour. The beating was allegedly provoked by the boy’s correspondence with a Chechen girl.

In 2020, Bela Bach, a German MP of Chechen origin, faced ostracism for wearing trousers. She was also criticised for appearing in photographs with male colleagues.

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OC MediaElizaveta Chukharova