Between war experience and ordinary police rationales: state violence against civilians in post-war Chechen Republic

The contribution presents a reflection on the rationales of violence that emerge in post-war Chechnya, on the basis of cases of abduction, illegal detention, ill treatment and torture reported by victims or their relatives in the recent years. The main hypothesis is that, if war is still present in the way different forces and people are acting, the main rationale of violence can be now understood in a more general framework of law enforcement brutality as observed elsewhere in Russia. This leads to understand present State violence in Chechnya as embedded in systemic "Russian" features exacerbated by a very recent war experience and on-going situation of fear and closure. The contribution will also look at the way the problem is addressed by Human Rights organizations that try to resort to the judiciary in combating those violences.