Encyclopedia

Two years have passed after the “four-day war”, but shelling and explosions on the demarcation line between Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, and Azerbaijan never cease. Military and civilians are still dying. The “Caucasian Knot” has analyzed more than 500 reports of the Ministries of Defense of all parties to conflict and compiled a calendar of military operations for the second year of the so-called truce in the conflict zone.

“By all appearances Oyub Titiev’s case is fabricated as a revenge for his human rights work. We demand Russian authorities to drop charges, immediately release Oyub Titiev, and guarantee his safety. Russia’s international partners should keep a close watch on the situation and demand Russian authorities to free Oyub Titiev,” said Joanna Kurosz, Eurasia programme director at Civil Rights Defenders.

We are troubled by the news that the head of the local Chechen branch office of the Russian human rights NGO Memorial, Oyub Titiev, has been arrested. This is the latest in a string of reports of alarming recent human rights violations in Chechnya. We call on Chechen authorities to immediately release Mr. Titiev.

Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), voiced serious concerns regarding the arrest and detention of Oyub Titiev, Director of the Memorial Human Rights Centre in Chechnya, in the North Caucasus republic of the Russian Federation.

The blood feud is a custom that had formed during the clannish social system as a universal means of defending the honour, dignity and property of the clan. It implies the duty of casualty's relatives to take revenge on the killer or his relatives. In recent months, several reasons have appeared to make sure – in Northern Caucasus, the blood feud is by no means a part of history; it continues acting as an actual social mechanism.

In France, billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, a senator from Dagestan, detained on November 20 at the Nice airport, was charged with laundering money through real estate transactions. For the investigation period, the French court released Suleiman Kerimov on bail of 5 million euros, banned him from leaving the Alpes-Maritimes Department and obliged him to regularly attend the police.

25 years ago, on August 14, 1992, the war in Abkhazia began. The conflict broke out after the Supreme Soviet of the Abkhaz ASSR, having restored the Constitution of Abkhazia of 1925, proclaimed the independence of the republic. The State Soviet of Georgia abolished this decision and deployed the troops of the National Guard of Georgia in Abkhazia.

The "Caucasian Knot" has gathered information about victims of conflict in Chechnya from among alleged militants – about those, who were killed or wounded in clashes with law enforcers and in committing terror acts in 2015 and 2016.

On March 20, 2017, the account "Chechen News" on the YouTube posted a video entitled "Meeting of Military Jamaat of Ichkeria". According to the captions to the video, it shows former fighters of the grouping "Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, who had fought in Syria. In the video, armed people, whose faces are masked, discuss how they will "gather Muhajids."

Svetlana Anokhina, a journalist from Dagestan, has published a book "There Was Such A City. Makhachkala". In 2015, she continued her publicist project in other books of the series. Ms Anokhina is widely known as the author of the Daptar.ru portal, which posts resonant stories of Caucasian women.

Gerbert Gevorgyan is a member of Yerevan art group “Counterstrike”, which responds to resonant events in the society, both in Armenia and abroad. In 2015, he actively participated in graffiti actions in support of employees of the “Nairit” Factory, Shant Arutyunyan, the organizer of the “Million Mask March”, and other political activists.

Gyunay Ismayilova is one of the most active members of the Azerbaijani NGO "Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety" (IRFS). In 2015, despite the pressure and persecutions, she organized, on the volunteer basis, monitoring of court trials against human rights defenders and journalists, and published information about human rights violation in Azerbaijan.

Elena Zavodskaya, an Abkhazian journalist, has covered the legal proceedings at courts of the Russian Gulgaz Mamedova, from whom her husband’s relatives had taken away took a child, and of Liana Todua, who died because of doctors’ incompetence.

In 2015, the social activist Albert Voskanyan achieved the resumption of monitoring the penitentiary establishments of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). He defended prisoners’ rights and was engaged in activities of social rehabilitation of former prisoners.

Over a long period of time, Dina Alborova, an activist and political analyst, has fought for the rights of non-government organizations (NGOs) of South Ossetia, which were under pressure from the authorities.

Gela Nikolaishvili was nominated for the “Hero of the Caucasus-2015” contest of the “Caucasian Knot” for achieving particular results in helping people.

In 2015, Tamta Mikeladze, a lawyer from Ajara and an employee of the NGO “Centre for Training and Human Rights Monitoring”; defended the interests of the owner of the children’s Muslim boarding school in Kobuleti, the closure of which was demanded by local residents; also, she acted as advocate of the LGBT activists, detained in Tbilisi on May 17, 2014, on charge of resisting the police.

In 2015, Zaurbiy Chundyshko, a public figure from Adygea, held a solo picket in memory of Judy Maf, an 11-year-old Circassian girl, who lived with her parents in the Adyg village of Marj Alsultan and was killed in Syria on September 26. The aim of the picket was to attract attention to the problem of repatriation of Circassians from Syria, where over 200,000 Circassians live.

In 2015, Igor Stenin, a public activist from Astrakhan, openly stated rights violations of Russian residents of the region and organized an action in support of the rights of the Russian population.

In 2015, Valery Dyakonov, a public activist from the Rostov Region protected the rights of deceived citizens, who received in the city clinical hospital invalid certificates for obtaining driver's licenses. Also in 2015, Mr Dyakonov achieved the issuance of overalls and payment wages in full to the ambulance staff.