Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch has filed an important and compelling report on the increasing presence of morality enforcers in Ramzan Kadryov’s Chechnya, who place extreme pressure upon local and visiting women to wear headscarves.

The morality zealots went around in groups. They surrounded women who had been bold enough to go out without a headscarf or in a skirt that was deemed too short. They upbraided them loudly, describing their behaviour as indecent and demanding that they should have some shame and “get dressed” forthwith.

Yakhita didn’t really understand what was going on. She had been living in Moscow for a long time, only coming home to Grozny on holiday to see her family. She had, of course, noticed the prominence of headscarves: women reading the news on television, teachers, staff of various organisations, students, even girls in the first year of school had all suddenly put them on. Her friends talked quietly about how during the war men had not protested when women rescued them, protected them and worked until they dropped to feed the family.  But now they’ve remembered they’re men and that “a woman should know her place.” Yakhita nodded in agreement, but only half listening. It wasn’t her problem, when all’s said and done. But it turned out that it was.