Front Line is concerned following reports of the defamation campaign against Mothers of Dagestan for Human Rights (MDHR) by the Russian media. MDHR is a human rights organisation created in 2007 by parents of persons who have disappeared in Dagestan. MDHR documents the numerous cases of enforced disappearances in this Republic of the Russian Federation.

Further Information

On 23 December 2008, Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya pravda published an article entitled “Human Rights defence à la Caucasus” in which MDHR was represented as an organisation which defends criminals and extremists. On 11 January 2009, Ms Dinara Butdaeva, the sister of Ms Gyulnara Rustamova, an active member of the MDHR, was arbitrarily detained by Dagestani militia and was not allowed to see her lawyer. Dinara Butbaeva was charged with the illegal purchase and storage of firearms, but Russian human rights organisations believe that the firearms were planted on her. On 26 January 2009, information about her arrest was announced on the television programme “Vesti”, on the federal channel ORT. Dinara Butdaeva was presented as a member of MDHR so as to profile MDHR as an organisation which supports extremists.

According to MDHR, 22 persons were kidnapped and disappeared in Dagestan in 2007. The figure for the following year was 11, with most of the victims being young men aged between 20 and 30. MDHR not only denounces the failure of the Dagestani authorities to investigate those cases and bring the kidnappers to justice, but possesses testimonies that in many cases Dagestani militiamen were involved in such disappearances.

Front Line believes that the defamation campaign against MDHR has been carried out because of the organisation's peaceful activities in the defence of human rights, in particular the rights of disappeared people and their families in Dagestan. Many Russian human rights organisations, such as Human Rights Center “Memorial”, Moscow Helsinki Group and Russian Movement for Human Rights, have expressed their protest against the defamation campaign and stressed the essential role of MDHR in collecting information about human rights abuses in Dagestan.