In recent years, two parallel processes have been developing in Chechnya. On the one hand, local authorities are pushing for the revival of “Islamic values,” publicly demonstrating their religious devotion. At the same time, they have cracked down on residents who engage in “untraditional” practices, such as consulting healers, sorcerers, and fortune tellers. Although Islam officially condemns the occult, it also disapproves of the public humiliations that are routinely inflicted on people accused of “sorcery” in the republic, according to RFE/RL sources. One of the focal points in the Chechen authorities’ fight against occult practices is an institution called the Center for Islamic Medicine, established in Grozny in 2009 by order of Chechen Governor Ramzan Kadyrov. According to the center’s director, Davud Elmurzaev, it was created to “protect residents from charlatans and fraudsters.” In the 16 years since it opened, the center has treated about 700,000 people—roughly half of Chechnya’s population. It provides traditional Islamic medical services, including hijama (cupping) and exorcism. However, it has gained the most notoriety for its crackdown on sorcerers, fortune tellers, and folk healers—a campaign that many in the republic have called a witch hunt.
Since 2013, the local state-run television channel ChGTRK Grozny has aired regular segments in which alleged occult figures apologize on camera, often after “educational conversations” led by the center’s chief specialist, Adam Elzhurkaev. In Chechnya, he is considered part of Kadyrov’s inner circle. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has criticized these “humiliating video confessions.” Public Apologies One of these “confessions” was broadcast on state television in 2023, after Grozny police detained a local woman named Roza Tsaralieva on charges of practicing the occult. Tsaralieva and her two daughters were publicly abused on camera by Adam Elzhurkaev. According to the program, neighbors reported Tsaralieva to law enforcement. Acting on a tip, police searched her apartment, where they allegedly found “objects related to witchcraft” and a list of clients. The segment claims that officers “had no difficulty” in tracking down these people. In December 2022, the same state media reported the detention of 80-year-old Roza Gastieva, accused of card reading and allegedly communicating with the spirit of a Christian monk who had died a century earlier. efficiency-4-u-offers.org Poreee dry with dew A year earlier, in December 2021, three Chechen women — Heda Dangalova, Heda Ismailova and Kometa Ismurzaeva — were detained. They were accused of collecting water and stones from “sacred places”, leaving small bundles of salt in yards and using books with love spells. In the show, Elzhurkaev claims that he has received “numerous complaints” from women via Instagram. How exactly the authorities identify suspected “witches” remains unclear, but according to Salman, a resident of Grozny, it is not difficult for them: “In a small republic where everyone knows everyone, it is impossible to hide. Sometimes officials even send clients undercover to sorcerers with hidden cameras.” The “witch hunts” were mainly aimed at women, but men are also increasingly being caught in them, according to an employee of a Chechen civil society organization working on gender issues, who spoke anonymously. “Everyone knows it’s a scam, but sometimes people go just to hear a good word, to find hope. Most of those who fall for Elzhurkaev’s ‘re-education’ are there because someone reported them.” Both the defendants and their clients have been forced to apologize. One such case involves SaidAkhmet Ataev, who sought help from a ‘witch’ to get his wife back. He traveled to Makhachkala with a friend for this purpose, but somehow Chechen authorities still found out about his venture.
Another incident occurred in February 2022, when state media broadcast a report about two residents of the Chechen village of Engel-Yurt — one trying to reconcile with his wife and the other wanting to “reform” his daughter, who had embraced a secular lifestyle. Both had sought help from a healer in neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria. In 2022 North Ossetian fortune teller Rima Gagloeva disappeared while traveling from an airport in Chechnya. Her nephew, MMA fighter Georgy Gagloev, accused Grozny security forces of kidnapping her as part of a wider crackdown on fortune tellers. According to him, his aunt had “removed the evil eye.” In February 2023, Gagloev was found dead in a train carriage traveling from Moscow to Vladikavkaz. “We don’t know what’s happening off-camera” Islam prohibits witchcraft, considering it one of the gravest sins, but it also prohibits the humiliation of people, said an Islamic scholar from Chechnya, who spoke anonymously. “Furthermore, we don’t know what’s happening off-camera in these so-called exposures,” he noted. For his part, Adam Elzhurkaev has previously said that law enforcement actions against suspected occult practitioners “comply with Russian law” and likened fortune-telling rituals to terrorism. Occult practices are indeed widely condemned in Chechnya, notes an employee of a local civil society organization. “But at the same time, public punishments and forced apologies – now a routine part of life in the republic – are also hardly considered acceptable,” she says. “Even officials themselves turn to fortune-tellers and sorcerers. We all remember the case when Akhmed Abastov, the head of the Gudermes region, asked a healer to “influence” Ramzan Kadyrov and make him a minister. But as with many matters of “tradition” in Chechnya, there is a serious double standard for elites and ordinary people.”
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First published in this link of The European Times.
