Three eyes and ink on my fingers

Some weeks ago the Freedom House Organization published a report on the freedom or lack of it in some countries and territories. Chechnya was classified as a territory without any kind of freedom. Asmik Zakaryan collaborates with a NGO specialized in the Caucasus conflicts. She didn’t want her name to appear because she feels frightened of having problems with the Kremlin so we’re using her nickname.

What’s the situation in Chechnya now?
It’s a peaceful country but just in terms of war because there isn’t one but I don’t think it’s really stable. The republics like Ingushetia or North Ossetia have a lot of problems with people being tortured or kidnapped. Chechnya as well but there it’s like a huge wave of this disaster.

The current president, Ramzan Kadyrov, appears to have a good image on some citizens.
He is the result of a friendship between Chechnya and the Kremlin, he does anything he wants with the country if he makes sure the citizens don’t bother the Kremlin. It’s true that he is constructing new buildings but there’s a lot of corruption. Some foundations give money for the reconstruction but a lot of people take advantage of it and don’t spend it on the good purpose. There are cases in which flats are given to people who paid some money to the public agency that is distributing them.

How do people react to this situation?
There are a lot of people who feels comfortable with this system because they just have to pay to get anything they want, they aren’t interested in living in a democratic country.

What about people who don’t have enough money?

We’re talking about people who get fifteen Euros a month. These people have so many problems that they aren’t really interested in wasting time asking for freedom.

A chechen woman stands outside her home in Chechnya / Eddy van Wessel

I suppose fear plays a big role in their decision as it’s known that critical voices tend to disappear.

If you don’t act in line with the government you can’t live there and if you have some relationship with a liberal view person you’ll have a lot of problems. You can’t go to the police because nobody will help you, it’s a lawless country.

How did people in Russia react to the murder of the lawyer and the journalism student?

There were some protests in Moscow and Chechnya but it’s not like here. There won’t be thousands of people protesting in the street. They think it’s not worth it.

What’s the situation of the media there?

There are a lot of journalists who leave their country because they can’t understand the way things are going on. Furthermore, they might get killed. There’re a lot of TV programs that used to criticize the government that have been closed and the rest can only be seen at 2 o’clock in the night.

We don’t get a lot of information coming from there. It seems like our media aren’t really interested in this issue.

I think that they aren’t interested in spreading out this kind of information about Russia because there’re so many economic and political interests. Chechnya was interesting some years ago with its’ two wars but what about now? You know, there’s “just” corruption, people disappearing and suffering… and that’s not interesting anymore.

Is it difficult for a foreign journalist to get to Chechnya?

You have to explain exactly why you want to go there, you need various permissions from the Russian government. There’re cases of journalists who had to pay around 6.000 Euros because they didn’t have the correct papers.

Do they feel presured when they’re in?

They’re controlled for sure but Russian journalists are under double pressure because they could be killed, while they can’t do so to the foreign ones if they have all the permits. They know that newspapers will have its’ own filters.

But, assuming that those filters won’t let critic visions about the Kremlin make it through, what about freelancers?
They probably won’t be allowed in and, if they’re, they’ll find it really difficult to work on proper conditions. Once the government invited international journalists to visit the country and what it did was to give away a great vision of the “reconstruction” of Chechnya and the way it was growing.