Ramazan Dzhaladinov, with Elena Milashina present, engages with journalists at a closed press conference in Moscow. Tanya Lokshina, Human Rights Watch, Dec 9, 2017. Ramazan Dzhalaldinov, a man in his 50s from a mountain village in Chechnya, is on the run once again and high-level Chechen officials are out to get him.
Dzhalaldinov wants Russian federal authorities to protect him and his family and hold the officials persecuting him to account. That’s what he said on Friday, December 9, at a news conference in Moscow hosted by Novaya Gazeta, a leading Russian independent paper, Memorial, one of Russia’s most prominent rights groups, and Human Rights Watch. The threats to Dzhalaldinov’s life are so grave that the news conference was by invitation only, and the invited journalists received the details about the place only a few hours in advance.
Dzhalaldinov’s ordeal started in April, when he recorded a video message timed to coincide with Vladimir Putin’s annual televised call-in show. In the video, which was then widely shared online, he complained that Kenkhi, his village in Chechnya’s remote Sharoi region, had suffered huge damage and was in ruins as a result of the Chechen wars and seasonal landslides. He accused local officials of embezzling the funds allocated for the village’s reconstruction.
