When I met the Chechen president in the capital’s football stadium last summer, he told me: “Women are so much more interesting when they are covered up.”
Officials nearby smiled awkwardly as Kadyrov boasted that Chechen men can take “second, third and fourth wives” and that polygamy, illegal in Russia, was the best way to revive his war-ravaged republic.
According to some estimates, one in five Chechen marriages begins when a girl is snatched off the street and forced into a car by her future groom and his accomplices. The internet is full of videos of these “bride stealings” set to romantic music.
And, of course, when the girls suffer “breakdowns” while in their arranged marriage, they can go to the Centre and get exorcised.
There were many tearful faces. Men paced up and down. It might have been an ordinary hospital waiting room until a girl started shrieking and contorting.
A man scooped her up and carried her off into a room off the landing.
Spine-chilling yells came from behind the frosted glass door but nobody turned a hair. Gradually they were stifled by incantations from the Koran.
Most of the patients here are young women and many have suffered breakdowns after being forced into marriage. They are brought to be exorcised and turned into Chechen-style Stepford Wives.
Read this story at the BBC and pass it around. People need to know that Chechnya is becoming the next Taliban run Afghanistan.
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I just watched the programme on BBC2. It really is quite disturbing. The obliviousness of most of the men and even a few women who don’t see why anyone should think what they’re doing is wrong is astounding.