Young women from shelter in Kazan returned to Makhachkala

Aishat Saigidguseinova and Fatima Saigitova left a shelter apartment in Kazan and returned to Dagestan of their own free will, says a father of one of them. The man accused human rights defender Svetlana Anokhina of the young women’s escape from home and voiced threats against her.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on October 18, law enforcers forcibly took away from a crisis centre in Kazan two young women who had fled from their relatives in Dagestan. Later, the young women contacted their friends, claimed that everything was fine with them, and called on not to look for them. Svetlana Anokhina suggests that Aishat Saigidguseinova and Fatima Saigitova made the above statements under pressure. Before the escape, the young women asked to help them leave the Caucasus, the human rights defender emphasized.

According to Svetlana Anokhina, Aishat Saigidguseinova and Fatima Saigitova were early married without their consent and complained about harassment by their husbands and relatives. In particular, 20-year-old A., who has a two-year-old daughter, was regularly beaten by her husband.

According to Fatima’s father, Svetlana Anokhina, who helped the young women flee, “did a number on their heads and took them away.”

Families do not insist that Fatima and Aishat keep the marriages. “If they don’t want to be with their husbands, no one keeps them,” Fatima’s father emphasized.

The “Caucasian Knot” has also reported about other cases of abduction of shelter residents. For example, on June 10, law enforcers detained Khalimat Taramova, a resident of Chechnya, in a Makhachkala apartment for victims of domestic violence.

The abduction of the young women in Makhachkala could undermine the confidence in the safety of shelters among victims of domestic violence, psychologist Nailya Birarova believes.