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Follow the blog of the Rafto laureate from Chechnya
Created: March 9, 2010
Yusupova, a Chechnyan lawyer and human rights advocate, was awarded the 2005 Rafto Prize, in recognition of her brave and unrelenting efforts to document human rights violations and act as a spokeswoman for the forgotten victims of the war in Chechnya.
Lidia Yusupova is an active journalist/blogger focussing on issues in the North Caucasus. A series of articles Yusupova has written in connection with her round trip to the North Caucasus in autumn 2009 are published in Russian on Caucasian Knot.* News articles covering North and South Caucasus are also available in English on Caucasian Knot.
Yusupova writes about the lives of internally displaced refugees; forced disappearances; traumatised families who face the anguish of never knowing the fate of a father, brother or son; illegal detentions; children and growing up in a war zone; life of ordinary people; and hope and hopelessness in the republics of the North Caucasus.
Brave voice of Chechnya
Human rights abuses in the North Caucasus and Russia’s policy of state terror is comprehensive (see, for example, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee report of 2008: Anti-Terrorism Measures and Human Rights in North Caucasus: A Regional System of Torture, Forced Confessions and Fabricated Trials). Russian officials have repeatedly rejected charges that security forces engage in systematic rights abuses. Instead, authorities blame militants for abductions and murders, calling them provocations intended to turn citizens of North Caucasus against Moscow.
In July 2009, Natalya Estemirova, journalist, human rights activist, colleague and friend of Yusupova, was abducted and killed in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Her body was later found in woodland near Nazran, the main city in neighbouring Ingushetia. Estemirova, like the well-known Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was shot in October 2006 in Moscow, documented human rights violations in Chechnya. The day before Estemirova was killed, suspicious men staked out Yusupova’s apartment in Grozny and questioned neighbours. She was not home at the time. “It could not be just a coincidence,” told Yusupova to the Rafto Foundation last summer.
Despite the loss of many family members, colleagues and friends, Lidia Yusupova continues to raise the issues regarding the human rights situation and freedom of speech in the North Caucasus.
When possible, Yusupova travels in North and South Caucasus and Europe to participate in conferences and meetings on issues in the North Caucasus. She also takes part in different events organised in memory of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.