Russia: Investigative reporter who uncovered gay purge attacked in Chechnya

A human rights lawyer and award-winning investigative reporter have been severely beaten in the Chechen capital of Grozny.

Marina Dubrovina and Yelena Milashina, a correspondent for the liberal Novaya Gazeta newspaper, say they were attacked as they returned to their hotel on Thursday evening. They were left with serious bruising after an assault that lasted 15 minutes.

Their assailants, a group of 15 men and women, were reportedly waiting for them as they entered the hotel lobby. The women in the group were first to attack, Ms Milashina said, but after a while the men joined in too. At least one of the men in the group was filming the event.

“They surrounded us by the lift and started to push back,” the journalist wrote in a statement published on social media. “They grabbed us by the neck and head and smashed our heads against the marble floor, punched me in the stomach and pulled at my hair.”

The reporter linked the incident to her work, and suggested the group had been made aware of her arrival in Grozny by a social media post.

The two woman were in Chechnya to cover the upcoming trial of Islam Nukhanov, 27. Mr Nukhanov was abducted by Chechen police in November and was then allegedly tortured in detention. Many link his treatment with a video he posted showing the exuberant lifestyles of Chechnya’s elite.

Both Ms Milashina and Ms Dubrovina have spent much of the past two decades documenting growing human rights abuses in the region. In 2017, Ms Milashina broke the news of a campaign of torture and worse being carried out against hundreds of gay men in the region. She has been the target of personal threats from Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

The largely Muslim republic in the mountains of Russia’s southern border has witnessed waves of violence since the fall of the Soviet Union. Two separatist wars destroyed much of the region and left thousands dead. The unforgiving counterinsurgency response by Russia brutalised many more, eventually giving way to a grand security bargain which brought the family of one of the warring factions to power.

Ramzan Kadyrov, who took over from his father after he was assassinated in 2004, is now largely left to his own devices in exchange for complete loyalty to the Kremlin. For many living in Chechnya, the deal has meant the normalisation of terror, abductions and torture.

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Ms Milashina’s newspaper Novaya Gazeta has been at the forefront of reporting some of the worst abuses.

For a long time, the job was done by Anna Politkovskaya, who is still revered by many in the region. Since Ms Politkovskaya’s murder in 2006 – gunned down in Moscow, likely on Mr Kadyrov’s orders –​ Ms Milashina has carried the torch.