The list of Russian human rights concerns at this moment is pretty long \u2014 the poisoning death of a former KGB agent in England, Moscow\u2019s involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Syria and the probable meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. Now, a particularly egregious cannabis case in Russia\u2019s southern republic of Chechnya has come into the international spotlight.<\/p>\n
The slaying of the ex-KGB man Sergei Skripal catalyzed the widespread calls<\/a>\u00a0for a boycott of the upcoming 2018 World Cup, set to open in Russia this June. Australia is\u00a0considering<\/a>\u00a0a boycott, and (not surprisingly) Ukraine\u2019s government is\u00a0openly advocating one<\/a>. But some are also calling for pressure on the International Federation of Associated Football (FIFA<\/a>) over the imprisonment of Oyub Titiev, the leading human rights activist in Chechnya, who was arrested on cannabis charges in January and faces years in prison.<\/p>\n Chechnya is a remote and politically isolated region, with the republic\u2019s President Ramzan Kadyrov running what\u00a0critics call<\/a>\u00a0a \u201ctotalitarian state within a state.\u201d During a recent anti-drug crackdown in Chechnya, officials arrested Titiev \u2014 who had previously spoken out against the government\u2019s anti-drug laws and internment of gay men in detainment camps.<\/p>\n At the time of his arrest,\u00a0Human Rights Watch called the charges<\/a> against Titiev \u201cblatantly fabricated,\u201d and expressed fears for his safety \u2014 noting the many threats and attacks on members of his rights organization,\u00a0Memorial<\/a>\u00a0(the only human rights organization actually functioning in Chechnya). Titiev assumed leadership of Memorial after the 2009 abduction and assassination of its then-leader, Natalia Estemirova.<\/p>\n On Jan. 9, police said they found 180 grams of cannabis during a search of Titiev\u2019s car. Just a week after his arrest, masked assailants staged an arson attack on one of Memorial\u2019s regional offices.<\/p>\n Human Rights Watch director for Europe and Central Asia, Rachel Denber, in March traveled to Chechnya to attend a court hearing in which Titiev appealed the extension of his pre-trial custody. His appeal was, predictably, turned down.<\/p>\n In her\u00a0write-up<\/a>\u00a0on the hearing, Denber also noted that the judge rejected the defense\u2019s motion to allow Titiev to sit with his lawyers instead of in the dehumanizing defendants\u2019 \u201ccage.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Grozny, Chechnya\u2019s capital, is slated to host the Egyptian national football team during the World Cup. And as Denber reminds us, FIFA has just instated a vigorous new\u00a0human rights policy<\/a>, that supposedly applies to all its operations. She writes: \u201cOne way to put this policy into practice, and address the unjust and unseemly juxtaposition of Titiev in jail and FIFA enjoying the embrace of Kadyrov, would be for them speak up for Titiev at the highest level and seek his release.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, things only seem to be getting worse for Titiev and his organization. Just days after Titiev\u2019s hearing,\u00a0Amnesty International reported<\/a>\u00a0the brutal assault on Sirazhutdin Datsiev, a regional director for Memorial. Datsiev was attacked from behind outside his home when an assailant delivered a severe blow to his head and then kicked him once he was on the ground. Datsiev was hospitalized, and is still recovering.<\/p>\n And this month,\u00a0Amnesty noted<\/a>\u00a0the one-year anniversary of the \u201cgay purge\u201d in Chechnya, in which dozens of men were abducted, tortured and killed by authorities. To date, not one person has been held to account for these crimes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have witnessed a shocking display of denial, evasion and inaction by the authorities, who have repeatedly refused to launch an official investigation into the reported heinous crimes,\u201d said Amnesty\u2019s Denis Krivosheev.<\/p>\n In fact, the \u201cgay purge\u201d has only been augmented with a similar wave of arbitrary arrests and torture of suspected drug users, as\u00a0the Independent<\/a> reported<\/a> in January. According to the paper, this crackdown on drug users is almost an exact mirror of the crackdown on homosexuality.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, this isn\u2019t the first time Chechnya\u2019s unforgiving cannabis laws have been apparently used to squelch internal dissent. In a profile of the Chechen police state, rights advocacy website\u00a0openDemocracy recalls the case<\/a> of Jalaudi Geriyev, a young journalist working for a liberal\u00a0online news site who was arrested for supposedly smoking hashish in April 2016. After being tortured in custody, Geriyev was convicted of cannabis possession and sentenced to three years in a prison camp. Prosecutors actually contradicted themselves about whether the packet of hashish was found in his backpack at the time of his arrest or in a subsequent search of his apartment. He remains at forced labor in a prison colony.<\/p>\n TELL US, <\/strong>do you think it\u2019s a human rights abuse to be imprisoned for cannabis use?<\/p>\n The post Cannabis Case Highlights Russian Human Rights Issues Ahead of World Cup<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The list of Russian human rights concerns at this moment is pretty long \u2014 the poisoning death of a former KGB agent in England, Moscow\u2019s involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Syria and the probable meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. Now, a particularly egregious cannabis case in Russia\u2019sContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,3981,3982,3819,3941,81,130],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25444,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25443\/revisions\/25444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Cannabis Case Highlights Russian Human Rights Issues Ahead of World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"