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How women became targets of repression in the Caucasus and why the situation will only worsen

At the end of March, Zarema Musayeva, a political prisoner and the mother of Chechen opposition figures, was scheduled to be released from a Russian penal colony. Shortly before, she had been charged with a new offense—"disorganization of a penal colony"—and remained in custody.

Musayeva is not the only native of the North Caucasus imprisoned for political reasons. Ingush protester Zarifa Sautieva was released this winter. Leyla Chemurzieva, a mother of many children from Ingushetia, was tortured after her arrest. Chechen native Zara Murtazalieva has been living in Europe since her release from prison. In the mid-2000s, she was convicted on trumped-up charges of plotting a terrorist attack on a shopping mall.

Murtazalieva was one of the first known female political prisoners in the North Caucasus, but in recent years, such cases have become more common.

NeMoscow spoke with political prisoners, human rights activists, and experts about why the Kremlin openly persecutes women for their views and why this trend has reached the conservative Caucasus.

The terrorist attack that never happened

"My first feeling was that everything happening around me was some kind of joke, absurd. That everyone would quickly figure out that there was a glitch in the system, and that it would be fixed. When you're 20, you can't be prepared for the adults around you to conspire to ruin your life," Zara Murtazalieva, who now lives in France, tells NeMoskva about the first days after her arrest.

In the early 2000s, she left Chechnya for Moscow to study. She rented a room in the capital and worked at an insurance company. In 2004, she was arrested and accused of plotting a terrorist attack on the Okhotny Ryad shopping center in Moscow (the attack never took place).

Murtazalieva spent eight and a half years in prison. Several Russian and international human rights organizations (Memorial Human Rights Center, Civic Assistance, the Moscow Helsinki Group, and Amnesty International) have deemed her a political prisoner and the case fabricated. Said Akhmayev, an officer with the Moscow Main Directorate of Internal Affairs' Department for Combating Organized Crime, fabricated the case, Murtazalieva said.

A native of Chechnya, she became one of the most famous political prisoners in Russia, although, as she herself says, during the two Russo-Chechen wars, many women from the Republic were also subjected to repression.

"Many Chechen women, just like me, were imprisoned without trial, killed, or raped. No one looked into their cases, no one covered their trials, no one talked about them. They were imprisoned solely because of their ethnicity, and many are still in prison," she says.

Release and attempts to start a new life became yet another challenge for the woman. According to a NeMoskva interviewee, "the process of psychological liberation from prison takes two or even three times longer than physical liberation."

After moving to Paris, Zara underwent medical examinations that revealed stage two cancer, various chronic illnesses, and a completely exhausted body:

"When I went to a Russian hospital after my release, the doctors insisted I was 'healthy as a horse,'" the interviewee emphasizes. "In Paris, the doctors assured me that Russian doctors couldn't have failed to notice my condition after the first few routine tests."

Doctors, psychologists, family, friends, and work helped Murtazalieva regain her health. But she never fully recovered.

"You can't just rewind everything and say to yourself, 'Everything's fine, everything will be like before.' I'm one of those people who draws conclusions, makes peace with their past, learns to live with it, and moves on."

"They jailed her because her children criticize Kadyrov."

One of the most discussed cases of recent years has been the criminal prosecution of 55-year-old Zarema Musayeva, the wife of former Chechen judge Saidi Yangulbaev and the mother of the opposition activists Yangulbaevs (at least one of whom, Ibrahim, is involved in the 1ADAT project, which criticizes Ramzan Kadyrov and the Kremlin).

Musayeva was detained in January 2022 in Nizhny Novgorod by Chechen security forces. They could not arrest her husband, who was with her, due to judicial immunity. Ramzan Kadyrov made no secret of the political subtext of the case. He had publicly criticized Musayeva's family on numerous occasions and made threats even before her arrest.

"The entire family has no sense of honor or dignity. No self-respecting person would sit in a sewer and meekly listen as their entire nation is humiliated with choice curses and insults. Be that as it may, I declare that this family is destined for either prison or underground," the head of Chechnya wrote in January 2022.

In July 2023, a Grozny court sentenced Zarema to five and a half years in prison for assaulting a police officer and fraud. Musayeva's family calls her arrest a personal vendetta against the head of Chechnya.

She was scheduled to be released from the penal colony on March 23, 2025, but shortly before that, she was charged with a new offense: "Disorganization of the penal colony." She remained in custody. Zarema faces another five years in prison.

Musayeva became a victim of a common practice in Chechnya, whereby relatives can be arrested in retaliation for the actions of citizens, Sergei Babinets, head of the Anti-Torture Team, commented in a conversation with NeMoskva.

"This case is the most striking example. Zarema Musayeva was imprisoned on trumped-up charges simply because her children criticized the head of Chechnya and his aides. Local residents see examples of the persecution of dissatisfied people and those who criticize the government. They are forced to publicly apologize, leave the republic or even the country, are kidnapped, and beaten. No one wants such a fate for themselves or their families, so even if people are dissatisfied, they try to remain silent," says Babinets.

"The authorities seemed to be saying: we don't care about your gender or your customs."

In 2018, the first mass protests in modern history erupted in Ingushetia, continuing into the spring of 2019. The event was triggered by the republic's head, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, agreeing to cede some territory to neighboring Chechnya.

Among the main participants in the protests were women: deputy director of the Memorial Complex to Victims of Repression, Zarifa Sautieva, journalist Izabella Evloeva, and Ingushneft employee Angela Matieva.

Matieva was fired from her job. Yevloyeva was forced to leave Russia—several criminal cases were brought against her for criticizing the invasion after the war in Ukraine began. Sautiyeva, meanwhile, was jailed. She became the only woman convicted in the so-called "Ingush case," which involved the trial of protest leaders. Zarifa was sentenced to seven and a half years on charges of organizing violence against a government official and participating in an extremist group.

Sautieva served her entire sentence (including time spent in pretrial detention) and was released in December 2024. During her trial, she entered into a nikah (Islamic religious marriage) with another political prisoner in the "Ingush case," Ismail Nalgiev. Nalgiev was released in early April, and a few days later they celebrated their wedding according to Ingush traditions. Hundreds of people attended the ceremony. The couple now lives in Ingushetia.

"The criminal prosecution of women in Ingushetia was perceived as political pressure on society as a whole, was considered unacceptable, and evoked sympathy," says Isabella Evloeva.

She recalls that many women participated in the 2018 protests. One night, a rumor spread that riot police had arrived at the square, where protesters had been on duty around the clock, to disperse the rally.

"Then a group of older women rushed toward the road—to block the security forces' path, if necessary, and thus protect the men," Yevloyeva recalls. "The men, of course, were unaware of their actions. The women were counting on being left alone. And I was confident of that then. Now, I'm not."

"They twisted her wounded arm, choked her, threatened to rape and kill her."

Several decades ago, women in the North Caucasus were considered wrong and improper to persecute "for their actions, thoughts, and conscience" according to local rules and traditions, says Sergei Babinets. However, in recent years, the situation has changed, and for the new generation of officials and security forces, this taboo no longer applies.

"In recent years, women's rights have been regularly violated in many areas of life, particularly by government officials. We've seen abductions, torture, physical abuse, rape, and politically motivated criminal and administrative prosecutions against women. Untouchability and sanctity have become empty phrases or have been lost in the mists of time," the source stated in a conversation with NeMoskva.

One telling example is the case of Leyla Chemurzieva, a twice-convicted resident of Ingushetia and mother of many children. She was first detained on October 31, 2015, following a special operation at a market in Nazran, during which suspected Vilayat Galgaiche militants (one of whom was her husband) were killed. Her mother claimed that Leyla was detained in a car while driving to the hospital to visit a friend. Security forces opened fire on the car, after which Leyla was taken to the hospital. She was isolated from her family while undergoing treatment.

"During this period, law enforcement officers regularly visited her and subjected her to ill-treatment in order to extract a confession of membership in illegal armed groups: they twisted her wounded arm, strangled her, pressed on her wounds to make them bleed, and threatened to rape and kill her. They did not allow a doctor into her room," the defense's complaint to the ECHR states.

Chemurzieva was sentenced to six and a half years for participating in an illegal armed group due to her husband's actions. She has since been released, but the authorities haven't left her alone. In 2022, a new case was opened against Chemurzieva for illegal possession of ammunition. Her lawyer, Basir Ozdoyev, told the publication "Fortanga" about torture, and her mother reported that security forces planted a grenade on Leyla.

"She was tortured; she had bruises, abrasions, and bruises. She wasn't tortured in the pretrial detention center, of course, but in the office of those who initially detained her. The staff at the pretrial detention center treat her well. However, she's being held in custody without cause," Ozdoyev said.

Ultimately, Chemurzieva was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and was released in September 2024.

"Repression in the Caucasus has always had a distinctly male focus. Women were generally left alone—it was considered a violation of adat, traditional ethics. Now, it's as if they're telling us: your gender and your adat are irrelevant. Anyone who challenges the institutions of power and its authority will be punished. The authorities are willing to ignore cultural taboos for the sake of effective repression," comments Izabella Evloeva.

"Only a regime change can change the trend."

"In the country as a whole and in the Caucasus in particular, over the past ten years, it has become virtually impossible to exercise one's political rights, even those enshrined in the Constitution," comments Sergei Babinets. "Under these conditions, the persecution of citizens and the emergence of political prisoners, including women, is natural."

This is especially true given that women have become more prominent in the socio-political life of the Caucasus: they support protest sentiments, engage in human rights advocacy, and report on human rights violations. During the 2018 protests, Yevloyeva explains, women had equal voting rights with other male members of the organizing committee, and their voices were no less important.

"In the North Caucasus, there's a traditional notion that women shouldn't engage in politics or any other active public activity. If they step outside this framework, the system simply stops making gender-based allowances," says Zara Murtazalieva.

NeMoskva's interlocutors unanimously agree that increased repression can be expected in the near future. They believe the line between criminal prosecution of men and women for their political views is blurring.

"Under authoritarian governance and weak legal protections, the number of female political prisoners [across the country and in the Caucasus in particular] will grow. This is no longer the exception, but the new norm," Yevloyeva believes.

"We can 100% expect a deterioration. This can only be stopped by changing the current political situation in the country and reorganizing many state institutions and bodies," Babinets concludes.