21 March 2024
Chechnya’s 18-year-old Youth Affairs Minister and son of Ramzan Kadyrov has instructed his ministry to track down and ‘educate’ people who violate Chechen norms and traditions on social media.
On Wednesday, Grozny TV, Chechnya’s public broadcaster, reported that Akhmat Kadyrov instructed the employees of his ministry to monitor platforms that allow users to stream live broadcasts for actions that contradicted ‘Chechen culture and values’.
Those found in violation of Chechen traditions would be called into the ministry for ‘education’. Neither Grozny TV nor the Ministry of Youth clarified what its ‘education’ would entail or what it viewed to be contradictory to Chechen values.
‘We note that Akhmat Kadyrov is actively doing preventive work among young people. Earlier, he met with difficult teenagers registered with juvenile affairs departments’, reported Grozny TV.
The authorities in Chechnya have previously discussed implementing similar measures, with Magomed Daudov, the chair of Chechnya’s Parliament, stating in 2021 that social media users spent too much time on platforms such as TikTok.
At the time, Daudov instructed the Ministry of Youth Affairs to ‘pay close attention to this’.
‘First, we will explain that it is not appropriate to behave this way; the second time, we will point out that this is categorically unacceptable for our youth, and if they don’t understand, then we can stop it’, said Daudov in 2021.
Last year, Khamzat Kadyrov, Ramzan Kadyrov’s nephew and adviser, also promised to ‘identify’ people who go against Chechen values online.
‘Work will be done on you, we will identify these people’, said Khamzat Kadyrov.
Last year, Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video of his 16-year-old son Adam beating a man accused of burning the Qur’an in Volgograd.
Adam Kadyrov’s assault on Zhuravel was one in a series of highly publicised cases in which people, including minors, were tried, humiliated, or forced to publicly apologise for insulting Islam or Chechnya.
