Chechen Police Arrest Witches in President’s War on Magic

Mountains of the Urus-Martan district (Wikimedia Commons)

Chechen religious police of the state-run Islamic Medical Institute (IMI) have detained two women and one man on accusations of witchcraft in the Urus-Martan district just southwest of Chechnya’s capital, Grozny. On September 21, the Chechen State Television and Radio Corporation (ChGTRK) broadcast the trio’s confessions to the allegations, in which they admitted “a long-term contract with the devil” amid charges of satanism from IMI head Adam Elzhurkaev.

These recent detentions follow suit from Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s 2013 anti-sorcery campaign, which early on resulted in the deaths and disappearances of many. Kadyrov, tightening his rule on Muslim Chechnya, implemented personal interpretations of Islamic law in the 2013 creation of the IMI, which uses local clerics to counter alleged anti-Islamic practices of magic and sorcery. After the initial purges of the campaign, Kadyrov and the IMI’s anti-sorcery efforts seemed to subside until September, when ChGTRK aired multiple confessions of witchcraft.

Reinvigorating this campaign, Kadyrov urged Chechen municipality directors “to eradicate sorcery in Chechnya.” ChGTRK reports the practice of magic “to be harmful by Islamic law.”

Mikhail Roshin, Senior Research Fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences, argues that the visuals of Elzhurkaev and the IMI looming over an array of animal bones, inscriptions, and other supposed magical artifacts on Kadyrov’s televised witch hunts seem to represent as much a power play for increased local authority and police control as they do a genuine rebuke of purported sorcery or magic. Under the guise of religious motivations, says the BBC, Kadyrov and Elzhurkaev advance an authoritarian agenda by exploiting the faith of the Chechen Muslim majority.

While some Chechen Facebook users express “gratitude to Kadyrov for protecting his people from all enemies, open and hidden,” the outside response highlights the human and civil rights abuses this campaign wreaks. Russian independent media has likened the war on sorcery to the witch trials of the Middle Ages, emphasizing the current Chechen administration’s history on human rights abuse, in particular its imprisonment and extrajudicial killings of LGBT people. Local Chechen lawyer Evgeny Chernousov says, “practicing magic is not a reason for detaining people in a secular state if the legislation is not violated.”

Chechnya is no stranger to leaders’ appeals to, or against, religion in pursuit of dictatorial authority. The Soviet Union’s propagation of anti-religious, atheist sentiments to reinforce its premiers’ cult of personality and influence on citizens’ lives seems to manifest today in exercises like Kadyrov’s anti-magic crusade, rooting out local traditions and spiritualism to enforce police power. 

This trend does not exist exclusively in Chechnya or the North Caucasus. Russian officials recently arrested a Siberian shaman trekking the 5,000 miles from his home province of Sakha to Moscow in an effort to exorcise Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he called a demon. Sakha province officials say the shaman was admitted to the Yakutsk neuropsychiatric clinic after an arrest onlookers described as a kidnapping, but the hospital reports no records of his stay. “The shaman’s actions may be eccentric, but the Russian authorities’ response is grotesque,” said Amnesty Russia’s director.

Russia’s response to the shaman, including up to four years in prison on charges of extremist activity, harkens back to the Soviet days of punitive mental treatment and disappearing of anti-government dissidents, reminds the Moscow Times. Considering Chechnya’s recent analogous practices—Kadyrov and the IMI’s detention of alleged witches and sorcerers—Chechnya’s past in the Soviet Union appears increasingly relevant in state affairs today.