Ramzan Kadyrov, Family Blacklisted by US State Department

The United States State Department has blacklisted the head of Russia’s republic of Chechnya and his immediate family. The US is condemning him of human rights violations that have worsened during the coronavirus pandemic.

The sanctions which have been approved, and which already add to those in place, prohibit Ramzan Kadyrov, his wife and his two daughters from traveling to the United States.

“The Department has extensive credible information that Kadyrov is responsible for numerous gross violations of human rights dating back more than a decade, including torture and extrajudicial killings,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.

Though the United States has recurrently confronted Kadyrov, Pompeo said the abuse is continuing and even worsening.

“We are concerned that Mr. Kadyrov is now using the excuse of the coronavirus pandemic to inflict further human rights abuses on the people of the Chechen Republic,” he said.

Kadyrov has even threatened reporters who have conveyed information on the government’s efforts to frighten people into avoiding tests for the COVID-19 and called those journalists the “enemies of the state.”