Rescuer of Chechen orphans missing after arrest in Lithuania
“Angel of Grozny” subject of Finnish documentary
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The benefactor of orphans from the war in Chechnhya, Hadijat Gatayeva, and her husband Malik Gatayev, have been arrested in the city of Kaunas in Lithuania.
According to a Lithuanian news agency, and Finrosforum, masked men from the Lithuanian security police took the couple from home on the night of October the 16th, and they have not been seen since.
Hadijat Tatayeva is a key figure in an award-winning 2004 documentary film by Finnish filmmaker Pirjo Honkasalo titled The 3 Rooms of Melancholia.
The couple set up an orphanage at a refugee camp in Ingushetia for Chechen children who had lost their parents in the conflict. It was later moved to Gorozny because electricity and water were cut off from the refugee camp. However, the children were not safe in the Chechen capital, so the Gatayevs moved the orphanage to Kaunas.
Pirjo Honkasalo has been in contact with the couple since the film was produced. “We last spoke a week ago, and then everything was all right. The orphanage has a house, and the children have a classroom where they can study both in their own language and in Russian”, Honkasalo says.
“Hadijat’s only concern was that she had not managed to bring the 21 orphan children left be hind in Grozny to her in Kaunas.”
“I know both of them very well and I know that they take very good care of the children.”
“Although they are not among the supporters of Chechnya’s current President Ramzan Kadyrov, I still thought that Hadijat would be inviolable.”
According to a Lithuanian news agency, and Finrosforum, masked men from the Lithuanian security police took the couple from home on the night of October the 16th, and they have not been seen since.
Hadijat Tatayeva is a key figure in an award-winning 2004 documentary film by Finnish filmmaker Pirjo Honkasalo titled The 3 Rooms of Melancholia.
The couple set up an orphanage at a refugee camp in Ingushetia for Chechen children who had lost their parents in the conflict. It was later moved to Gorozny because electricity and water were cut off from the refugee camp. However, the children were not safe in the Chechen capital, so the Gatayevs moved the orphanage to Kaunas.
Pirjo Honkasalo has been in contact with the couple since the film was produced. “We last spoke a week ago, and then everything was all right. The orphanage has a house, and the children have a classroom where they can study both in their own language and in Russian”, Honkasalo says.
“Hadijat’s only concern was that she had not managed to bring the 21 orphan children left be hind in Grozny to her in Kaunas.”
“I know both of them very well and I know that they take very good care of the children.”
“Although they are not among the supporters of Chechnya’s current President Ramzan Kadyrov, I still thought that Hadijat would be inviolable.”
Helsingin Sanomat