Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 12 – The case of the Ingush
girl who was tortured either by the authorities or by her extended family who
by tradition supervised her after her parents divorced has called attention to
the strength of adat norms not only in Ingushetia but throughout the North
Caucasus (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/337768/ and novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/07/09/81176-adat-ne-dyshlo).
The tradition of having children of
divorced parents move in with one or another member of the family of the
husband is part of customary law in that region, Olga Gnezdilova of the Legal Initiative Group says; and often
such children are isolated from their mothers and mistreated by those with whom
they live.
That appears to be the case here.
The mother of the seven-year-old now in hospital has been denied access to the
girl, and an investigation has found that the natural children of the woman
with whom she had been living show no evidence of mistreatment. Nonetheless,
the authorities have taken them from the woman and put them in foster care.
Adat, “the complex of
traditionally evolved local legal and behavioral institutions and norms in
regions of the Islamic world,” does not require that such children be isolated
from their biological mothers but it does suggest that they should be looked
after not by them but by the families of the fathers. As in this case, that does not always end
well.
According to the report in Novaya
gazeta, “adat is so strong that subordinates to itself any
independence of Chechen, Ingush or Daghestani judges and their ability to
judge, when they operate according to the law and good sense and not by the
tradition” enshrined in this customary law.
As a result, the Moscow paper says, “there
are dozens if not hundreds of well-documented cases when mothers have
unsuccessfully sued in republic courts for the right to educate or even spend
some time with their own children after divorce.” Instead and in violation of their responsibilities,
judges uphold adat and not Russian law.
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