Oyub Titiyev, Chechen Human Rights Defender - Story by Shura Burtin

I translated Russian journalist Shura Burtin’s piece “Monitor 1” for the new True Story Award, an initiative of the German magazine Reportagen to honor excellent long-form journalism and “supplement and broaden the predominantly Western view of the world with other perspectives.”

In “Monitor 1,” Burtin tells the story of Chechen human rights defender Oyub Titiyev (also transliterated “Titiev”), imprisoned by Chechen authorities on false charges in reprisal for Titiyev’s work with the Chechen branch of Memorial documenting state-sponsored violence against civilian Chechens.

Burtin’s original Russian reporting in Meduza.

On March 18, 2019, Titiyev was sentenced to four years in a penal colony. His supporters were actually relieved to hear his sentence: it could have been far, far worse. Yet Titiyev is by no means safe.

You can read more about Oyub Titiyev’s case in English on the Frontline Defenders website here and on the Amnesty International website here.

Memorial’s report on Titiyev’s imprisonment (in Russian).

Although colony rules allow family visits, most of Titiyev’s family members got so many death threats that Memorial moved them to Europe.

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