WITCH HUNTERS

CHECHNYAN WITCH HUNT

hile much of Europe and the US spent Hallowe’en weekend trick-or-treating, in the Russian Republic of Chechnya it was an excuse for reinforcing the state’s crackdown on “sorcery and witchcraft”. After being secretly filmed for more than two weeks, Zulai Kurashevaya, Tumisha Kunumirovaya and Irina Adyevaya were rounded up by soldiers from the 249th Special Motorised Battalion and accused of witchcraft, having been found with maps, Tarot cards, and a “magical” stone one of them had obtained in the Buddhist region of Kalmykia. In undercover footage shown on Grozny TV, the state television channel, the “witches” are shown boasting of extraordinary powers including being able to cure tuberculosis and predict the future. On arrest they protested that they were simply natural healers and not in league with evil forces, but nonetheless they were passed over to the Republic’s “Centre for Islamic Medicine”, which plays a central role in witch hunts in the country. Chechnya is, at