The cars pull up in broad daylight. Security forces point guns at terrified women and shoot. It turns out they're paintball pellets, but still harsh punishment in Chechnya for leaving home without a headscarf. Chechnya's strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has imposed an Islamic dress code on women, and his feared security forces have used paintball guns, threats and insults against those refusing to obey.
Kadyrov rules with the support of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has counted on him to stabilize the mostly Muslim region in southern Russia after two separatist wars in the last 16 years. Russian authorities have turned a blind eye to the treatment of women and other rights abuses in Chechnya
One of the victims, identified as Louiza, told the rights group that she and a friend were attacked while walking down Putin Avenue in Grozny on a hot day last June, wearing skirts a little below the knee, blouses with sleeves a bit above the elbow and no headscarves. Suddenly a car without a license plate pulled up, its side window rolled down and a gun barrel pointed at them.
"I thought the gun was real and when I heard the shots I thought: 'This is death,"' she recalled in the report. "I felt something hitting me in the chest and was sort of thrown against the wall of a building.
Another target, a 29-year-old woman whose name was not given, said she was walking down the same central avenue in June with two other women, all without headscarves, when two cars stopped nearby and bearded men in black uniforms fired paintball guns at them, screaming: "Cover your hair, harlots!"
Threatening leaflets also appeared on the streets of Grozny, warning women that those who fail to wear headscarves could face "more persuasive measures." The women interviewed by Human Rights Watch interpreted that as a threat to use real weapons.
The paintball attacks ended in mid-June, having achieving Kadyrov's objective. The majority of women are now too scared to enter the center of Grozny without headscarves or dare to complain against the "virtue campaign."
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