Top Russian rights activist pelted with eggs

Masked men threw eggs, flour and disinfectant at a prominent Russian rights activist in Chechnya in an attack that sparked widespread condemnation on Thursday.

Igor Kalyapin, the head of the Committee to Prevent Torture rights group was ordered to leave his hotel on Wednesday evening and then targeted by a group of “young men in civilian clothes and black masks”, a lawyer for the group said.

“They threw eggs, cake, flour and green disinfectant,” Dmitry Utukin said.

Utukin posted a photograph on Facebook of Kalyapin standing with his face and jacket coated with flour and eggs and bright green disinfectant.

Kalyapin, a veteran activist, has publicised abuses by the Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. 

His group, which oversees rights activists in Chechnya, is one of the few still active in the region.

The Kremlin rights council, an advisory body to President Vladimir Putin of which Kalyapin is a member, said it was “outraged and concerned” at the attack, which it condemned as “a disgrace”. 

The rights council said it wrote to Russia’s interior minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev asking him to take personal control of the probe into the incident, which it said should be treated as the criminal offence of hooliganism.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that “an attack on a member of the presidential council... is a very dangerous trend, which undoubtedly prompts concern. This is unacceptable”. 

Peskov linked the attack to the crime-prone situation in the region, dismissing a suggestion that it could affect whether the Kremlin extends Kadyrov's mandate next month.

Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia director Hugh Williamson said “the attack on Igor Kalyapin shows again that it's open season on human rights defenders in Chechnya”. 

Earlier this month, masked attackers beat up foreign journalists and support staff and set fire to their minibus as they were driving to Grozny on a press tour organised by Kalyapin’s group.