Swank apologises over Chechen party

HOLLYWOOD celebrity Hilary Swank said she “deeply regrets” visiting a concert held on the birthday of the Kremlin-backed Chechen leader, who is accused of torture, abductions and killings by human rights groups.

The two-time Oscar winner said that she was unaware of the disappearances, house torchings and extra-judicial killings reportedly orchestrated by Ramzan Kadyrov in the southern Russian republic.

“I deeply regret attending this event,” Swank said in a statement yesterday. “If I had a full understanding of what this event was apparently intended to be, I would never have gone.”

She issued the message after Human Rights Watch criticised her – along with Belgian actor Jean Claude Van Damme, British violinist Vanessa Mae and British singer Seal – for attending a show that, it says, “trivialises the suffering of countless victims of human rights abuses”.

On Mr Kadyrov’s 35th birthday on 5 October his government organised a lavish concert in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, that has been restored after being flattened during two wars between Chechen separatists and Moscow since 1994.

Celebrities showed up to congratulate and lavish Mr Kadyrov with praise from a stage arranged between a gigantic mosque which gleams with Swarovski crystal and a newly-built business centre.

During the birthday show, Swank said that she had been taken by the Chechen government’s “passion to make peace and to make something beautiful”. She claimed that her invitation made no mention of Mr Kadyrov’s birthday.

At the show, Swank also appeared to be one of the few women to wear no headscarf even though women in Chechnya are compelled to adhere to an Islamic dress code. Those who refuse to obey have reportedly faced threats and harassment from security forces.

Swank won Oscars for her roles in Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby.

Rights activists said the ceremony, which closed with a fireworks display to Mr Kadyrov’s repeated shouts of “Allahu Akbar! [God is great]”, was evidence of a growing personality cult around the leader.

Posters showing his smiling face are affixed to hundreds of buildings throughout Chechnya.

Mr Kadyrov is a former separatist rebel who has boasted of killing his first Russian soldier at the age of 15.

He went over to the federal side at the start of the second Chechen war in 1999.

His father, Akhmad Kadyrov, ran Chechyna from then until 2004, when he was assassinated in a bomb attack.

A string of Mr Kadyrov’s critics and political rivals have been murdered in recent years. He has consistently denied involvement in any of the killings, saying the accusations are fabricated to blacken his name.

The birthday show was the latest in a series of expensive and extravagant events sponsored by Mr Kadyrov’s government despite Chechnya’s high poverty and unemployment rates.