Chechen state servants claim forcing to promote authorities in social networks

In Chechnya, law enforcers and employees of budget-funded organizations were instructed to write laudatory comments about the actions of the republic's authorities and ridicule criticism thereof.

The call to respond to negative comments about the Chechen leadership was voiced out at a meeting with law enforcers by Akhmed Dudaev, the Chechen Press Minister. He touched upon "information attacks" on the republic in mass media and social networks.

"Our leadership has instructed not to ignore any negative information about republic's authorities Chechnya as a whole placed on the Internet or in social networks. There should be positive comments on any topic," said Ramzan, an employee of the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA).

"An instruction arrived to place positive comments on the Instagram of the Ministry for Emergencies (MfE) and work in other networks," an employee of the Chechen MfE named Vakha told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Another Vakha, a serviceman of the "Rosgvardia" (Russian National Guard), has also said about his bosses' request to post positive comments in social networks.

Earlier, the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, suggested Internet users not to publish critical comments, citing the norms of the Islamic morality. In November 2019, he also demanded to identify authors of negative materials about Chechnya and the social media users commenting on them.