Outrage rises at Chechen 'witch hunt'
- Published
Adam Elzhurkayev confronts a witness on television
Three elderly people have been detained in Chechnya on suspicion of "practising sorcery", prompting concern among civil-rights defenders.
The three - two women and a man - were detained in Urus-Martan in the autonomous republic of southern Russia's Caucasus Mountains, and paraded on the local state-run Grozny TV, external channel.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the authoritarian president of Chechnya, has used his own interpretation of Islamic law to bolster his eight-year rule in the overwhelmingly Muslim republic, and accordingly set up the Islamic Medical Institute in 2013, external in association with the local clerical leadership to counter "sorcerers and witches".
In July, he expressed dissatisfaction with progress, and the Institute's black-clad religious police duly reported this month that they had detained a number of suspects.
The latest suspects appear to be practitioners of nothing worse than folk medicine and fortune-telling, external, the Kavkazsky-Uzel Caucasus news site reports.
The man and one of the women confess on air to "consorting with djins" - evil spirits - and the other woman says she advised a client to bathe in chicken broth to evade the "evil eye".
All the time, Grozny TV cuts back to the imposing figure of the head of the Islamic Institute of Medicine, Adam Elzhurkayev, who points to alleged evidence of witchcraft, ranging from bottles and chicken bones to dolls and inscriptions, all laid out on a table.
He brandishes a long stick and accuses the trio of "selling their souls to the Devil", while the TV presenter dutifully points out that the practice of magic is "confirmed to by harmful by Islamic law".
'Straight into the Middle Ages'
Human-rights campaigners and the independent media in the rest of Russia are horrified, external, and many on social media are comparing the spectacle with Medieval witch trials, external.
""They've leaped back so fast that they've vaulted over the Renaissance straight into the Middle Ages," wrote one commentator on Facebook
Some complain that folk healers are conning the public out of their money and should be prosecuted, but others counter that "there are already laws against fraud but none against recommending broth baths".
Others jokingly link the story to the Siberian spirit guide who was arrested last week on a march to exorcise President Vladimir Putin, seeing it as part of an "all-Russian battle against the paranormal, external", but Kavkazsky-Uzel recalls that, during the first phase of the anti-sorcery campaign in 2013, several people were reported dead or missing in Chechnya, external.
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Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechnya has a poor record on human rights, in particular against gay people, and one specialist on the Caucasus thinks the witchcraft campaign is likely to be another example of his using traditional Islamic teachings to strengthen his grip on the republic.
"This is less about religious motives and more about police control, external, which is stronger there than in other republics of Russia," Mikhail Roshin told Kavkazsky Uzel.
The Grozny TV report did not detail any charges against the three elderly people, but concluded with the warning that "the clerical leadership and law-enforcement agencies are increasing their efforts for the sake of a healthier society".
The table is laden with alleged evidence of sorcery
Reporting by Martin Morgan
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