Four Young Daghestani Women Subject to Genital Mutilation and Other Abuse Escape Russia but Not without Travails

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 5 – The case of four young Daghestani women who had been subject to genital mutilation and other abuse but have managed to escape both their republic and Russia, albeit not without difficulty, has attracted widespread attention to the repression of women in both places (publizist.ru/blogs/114213/44323/-,  kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/382721/, holod.media/2022/11/01/pochemu-sestry-sbezhali-iz-dagestana/ and novayagazeta.eu/articles/2022/11/01/krasivoe-mesto-gde-zhivut-litsemery).

            Four young women from a Daghestani village who have now managed to escape to the Republic of Georgia say that they were subjected to genital mutilation and “beaten for the smallest violation” of social rules. Moreover, they were about to be handed over to men they did not want to be their husbands.

            “Such words,” Russian human rights activist Eva Merkacheva says, “aren’t from many centuries ago but from Russia today.” And both the abuse the women suffered at the hands of relatives in their native village and the unwillingness of Russian officials in Moscow and the border to help them without delay are horrific crimes.

            The women first fled to Moscow where activists provided them asylum but officials helped their relatives track them down. Then they sought to leave the country. At the Georgian border, officials held them and probably would have handed them back to their relatives despite the law had human rights activists like Merkacheva not intervened and threatened publicity.

            Now, they are in Georgia where the authorities are providing them with protection. But the young women and their supporters fear that the relatives of the young women may seek to track them down, kidnap them, and return them to Daghestan. As a result, the four hope to move even further away from their homeland.

            They are especially worried about one thing: their relatives are likely to be at risk of violence from others in the Daghestani community who will use such threats to try to force the young women to return. According to activists, such threats are real; and so it is too soon to celebrate their escape as a victory over abuse and obscurantism.