21:18, 29 September 2020

Human rights defenders demand to find Salman Tepsurkaev

Salman Tepsurkaev. Screenshot: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFFm8A6Cwtn/

The Russian investigating bodies are to identify and find the persons responsible for the violence used against Chechen resident Salman Tepsurkaev, to find the very young man, and to investigate other crimes against critics of the authorities of Chechnya, members of nine human rights organizations declare.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on September 7, in Chechnya, and then beyond the republic, a wide public outcry was provoked by a video in which a naked man, who introduced himself as Salman Tepsurkaev, was sitting on a bottle with explanations that he was doing that as punishment for his cooperation with the opposition "1ADAT" Telegram channel. The channel's authors are sure that the moderator of their chat, Salman Tepsurkaev, was kidnapped and publicly humiliated by the Chechen law enforcers.

Today, the statement prepared by the Russian and international human rights organizations concerning the Salman Tepsurkaev's case, addressed to the Russian authorities, has been posted on the website of the human rights organization "Human Rights Watch" (HRW).

The authors of the statement remind that several weeks after the kidnapping of Salman Tepsurkaev in Gelendzhik, his whereabouts still remain unknown, and the Chechen authorities and the Mufti publicly approved the violence used against Salman Tepsurkaev.

"We express our indignation at what happened. And we demand from the authorities of the Russian Federation to immediately locate the whereabouts of Salman Tepsurkaev and punish the persons responsible for the violence used against him," declares the statement, personally signed by nine well-known human rights defenders.

Moreover, the human rights defenders also demand an answer to the question of why no one has been punished for the crimes against other critics of the Chechen authorities.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on September 29, 2020 at 04:36 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.