Date:
Friday, September 24, 2010
PeaceWomen Consolidated Themes:
Neither the commissioner for human rights nor the police in Russia's North Caucasus Republic of Chechnya have received any reports about attacks on women not wearing headscarves, a spokesman for the commissioner's office said.
The website of Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin said on Friday that the Russian Prosecutor General's office would conduct a probe into media reports about street raids on women not wearing headscarves in the Chechen capital Grozny.
Several Russian and international media sources reported that women without headscarves had been shot at with paintball pellets, verbally insulted and barred from attending public events during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
"We have no such information. We have received no complaints about that," a spokesman for the Chechen human rights commissioner said.
An interior ministry source also said it had received no such information.
