Russian police have again detained Lena Patyaeva for holding a solo protest demanding an investigation into the alleged death of her friend, Chechen native Seda Suleymanova.
The protest was held on Tuesday outside the 54th police station in Saint Petersburg’s Krasnoselksy District. This is the same station Suleymanova was taken to in the summer of 2023 before being handed back to her relatives who took her to Chechnya.
During the demonstration, Patyaeva held a placard reading: ‘You handed her over to death. Live with it’.
Forty minutes after the protest began, Patyaeva was detained and taken to the 42nd police station. According to human rights activists from the group Slovo Zashchite (which translates as ‘give the defence a word’), Patyaeva is to remain in custody until a court hearing on the administrative case brought against her. The hearing was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but has not yet taken place as of publication.
On Tuesday evening, following Patyaeva’s detention, activists in Moscow posted leaflets in support of her and Suleymanova. The leaflets read: ‘Seda was abducted’.
Patyaeva has repeatedly held solo protests in support of Suleymanova — previously in Saint Petersburg and even in Grozny — despite the risks to her personal safety, demanding clarification about her friend’s abduction.
Suleymanova, a 26-year-old Chechen woman, fled her family in 2022, citing her unwillingness to marry without love and constant conflicts at home. She lived and worked in Saint Petersburg until Chechen security forces reportedly forcibly returned her to Chechnya in August 2023. In February 2024, human rights defenders declared that she may have been killed by her family.
In August, in an interview with the independent Russian TV channel Dozhd, the director of Human Right Group NC SOS, David Isteev, said that Suleymanova was buried in her native village of Alkhan-Yurt, ‘outside the cemetery, on the edge of the road’. Isteev stressed that the information about the place of burial came from people who could have obtained it from relatives or persons close to the family.
Elizaveta Chukharova
