Human rights defenders draw UN’s attention to practice of police preventive registration in Dagestan

The “Memorial” Centre for Defence of Human Rights has informed the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Russia about the ongoing persecution of residents of Dagestan on religious grounds under the lists of the police preventive registration. The human rights defenders have called on the UN at the international level to protect the rights of residents of Dagestan to private life. The UN must influence Russia and achieve the abolition of discriminatory practice of the police preventive registration, the human rights defenders emphasize.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that in 2020, law enforcers regularly carried out Friday raids near the “Tangim” mosque in Makhachkala, and several thousand of its visitors were put on the police preventive registration lists. In July 2023, the “Memorial” Centre for Defence of Human Rights reported a change in the tactics of the police preventive registration in Dagestan: now policemen visit people at home under the pretext of a population census or demand to send photographs from their place of residence.

Vazir Bazanaev, a resident of the village of Chinar in the Derbent District, has been on the police preventive registration list since 2013, and in 2014, his wife was also added to it. “They were regularly harassed by phone calls from the police department with demands to explain where they were and what they were doing. Moreover, Vazir Bazanaev was deprived of his right to move freely around the country, and later, he was completely forbidden to leave Dagestan,” the human rights defenders state in their appeal.

Makhach Bammatkhanov has been persecuted by law enforcers since 2015: the man was regularly taken to the police, his house was searched, and he was forbidden to leave Dagestan without permission. Makhach Bammatkhanov was the imam of the mosque in the village of Kostek in the Khasavyurt District of Dagestan.

“After going to court, the man was subjected to pressure and threats so that he would withdraw his claim. Makhach Bammatkhanov had to leave Russia in 2017,” the human rights defenders note.

Daniyal Alkhasov was put on the police preventive registration list in September 2014. According to his story, law enforcers insulted him, threatened him with dismissal from his job and criminal prosecution, after which they “forced him to cut his beard, threatening to plant a fun to him.”