Police in North Caucasus Involved in Carrying Out Honor Killings, UN Told

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Oct. 29 -- In a report to the United Nations on the state of human rights in the Russian Federation, Mariana Katsarova says that police in the North Caucasus are often directly involved in carrying out honor killings or support those who carry them out, despite laws against murders.
    The human rights expert also reports that more than 1,000 Dagestani women every year are subjected to genital mutilation, a horrific practice that Muslim leaders in the region have denounced but that the Russian government does not have a specific law against (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/405072).
    According to Katsarova, the authorities both in Moscow and in the republics of the North Caucasus are making it ever more difficult for activists to report on what is going on, thus concealing many such crimes and allowing the Russian government to claim that the situation is getting better.
    But in fact, she suggests, the situation with regard to both of these crimes may be getting worse, given that Moscow prefers to hide rather than suppress such practices and republic governments or at least their police components see such actions as reflecting national traditions that they want to protect.
    As a result, the number of victims of both these and other crimes linked with national traditions is almost certainly vastly higher than she is able to document, Katsarapova says, something that will change only if there is a concerted international effort to force Moscow to crack down on such crimes and the involvement of police in them.
    For background on this situation and its current state of play, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/oppression-of-north-caucasian-women-now.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/10/moscow-still-ignoring-problem-of-female.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/abuses-in-ingushetia-call-attention-to.html.