Migrant worker beaten in Chechnya for ‘approaching’ Chechen woman

A migrant worker in Grozny has purportedly been beaten up on camera for ‘approaching’ a Chechen woman. 

On Monday, ChP Chechnya, a local Telegram channel, published footage purportedly shot in Chechnya showing a man beating another man in the distance. In another video, a crowd is seen surrounding the two men, one of whom appears to be visibly injured, and another warning onlookers against ‘approaching’ Chechen women.

‘There is no Nazism here: we treat everyone with respect, we treat everyone like brothers’, he says in Russian. ‘But if someone approaches a Chechen girl there, then everything will happen in a moment. I swear to Allah, the same thing will happen. This is just the tip of the iceberg, do you understand?’

While the identity of the man remains unknown, Chapter Kavkaz, another Telegram channel, re-shared the videos with a caption describing the incident as ‘an educational process of a presumably Tajik migrant in Grozny’.

The authorities in Chechnya have yet to comment on the incident.

In Chechnya, there are strong societal constraints on women’s sexual and romantic independence, with frequent cases of ‘honour’ kidnappings and murders, as well as ‘punishment’ and abuse of women who pursue relationships independently or outside of marriage.

While pressures on men are less frequently reported, protection of women’s ‘purity’ does on occasion affect men. In a widely-reported case in 2019, Benjamin Rich, a British travel vlogger who blogs as ‘Bald and Bankrupt’, was forced to publicly apologise for a video in which he expressed a dream of dating a Chechen woman, and referred to Chechen women as ‘chicks’ while on a train to Chechnya. 

The apology appeared to be recorded in a government office, with a portrait of Vladimir Putin in the background.