Security forces in Chechnya have been holding Belkisa Mintsayeva for the second month.

Belkisa Mintsayeva, a native of Chechnya who came to the republic under pressure from security forces, has been held in a police station without procedural status for 32 days.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," on April 14, Lidiya Mikhalchenko, head of the "Motherless Caucasus" human rights project, reported that security forces detained 33-year-old Belkisa Mintsayeva in the Nadterechny District of Chechnya "without any grounds." According to the human rights activist, Mintsayeva's children are with her ex-husband. Mintsayeva came to Chechnya under pressure from security forces, who threatened to send her brother to the SVO. Activists subsequently reported that Mintsayeva was under arrest at a Chechen police station, where lawyers were being denied access to her and were being intimidated. The lack of contact with Belkisa Mintsayeva, who was detained in Chechnya, and the lack of information about her legal status for three weeks is a serious danger, a human rights activist and lawyer interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" indicated.

Belkisa Mintsayeva, who lived in Novosibirsk and was suing her ex-husband for custody of her two children, was detained by Chechen security forces and has not been in contact for 32 days, the "Motherless Caucasus" project reported on May 14.

Human rights activists have information that while Belkisa is being held illegally without formal charges, her daughters, living without their mother, may be subjected to violence.

“The repressive apparatus in Chechnya is holding a young woman in prison without justification. Every day of her arrest compounds the crime of her jailers and accusers. Belkisa's relatives and even her lawyers are intimidated by threats of reprisals against them and are unable to take any action,” the project's publication states.

Belkisa's ex-husband declared a "hunt" for her and her daughters after her mother took her youngest daughter from Chechnya at her own request, the human rights group Marem notes.

“The neighbor who drove her to her husband's house was detained, and there's no news of him. Then they detained her brother, threatening to send him to the front if Belkisa didn't fly to Chechnya with her daughters. They blackmailed the entire family, and Belkisa eventually gave in,” the human rights activists wrote in a post on May 12.

A Chechen human rights activist who has worked in the republic since the war called Mintsayeva's situation “unprecedented,” since “never before had a mother fighting for the right to see her children been thrown behind bars for a whole month.”

During the war and post-war years, when security forces took men and teenagers from their homes in Chechnya, it was women who came to their defense. "It seemed easier for women to break into departments, checkpoints, and temporary detention facilities. They were treated differently—more leniently—and this gave them at least some chance of finding out something, getting someone out, getting an answer," the human rights activist was quoted as saying by Daptar.

She noted that in recent years, the persecution of women in Chechnya "has ceased to be perceived as something unacceptable"—they are now also subject to pressure, threats, and violence. "The very boundaries of what is permissible have noticeably shifted," the human rights activist added.