Osa Archivum Catalog

Coca - The Dove from Chechnya

Summary: Her parents called Zainap Gashaeva “Coca” – the Dove. Born in exile in Kazakhstan, she raised four children and became a businesswoman. Since 1994, Zainap has been documenting what have become daily events in Chechnya: discrimination, abduction, torture, murder. Zainap is a founder of Echoes of War, a group of Chechen women who document the atrocities that the Russian government has committed in Chechnya while declaring war on terror. The videos, hundreds of them, are hidden by the women, buried under floorboards, stashed in the backs of closets and in hollowed out walls, and smuggled out of the country by Gashaeva and others in nondescript shopping bags as often as they can get them out. In addition to the mountains of dusty tapes, Gashaeva and her partners have built a database of information linking and cross-referencing facts about Chechens who have disappeared at the hands of the state police – a painstaking record which they hope will someday be used as a reckoning, and perhaps as a link to find out what happened to the missing. With Chechnya closed to the international media, Zainap Gashaeva is now bringing these tapes to the United Nations and other international organisations to serve as evidence so that the guilty will be punished.

Item Type	Current Location	Call Number	Status	Shelving Location	Public Note
DVD-ROM	OSA Film Library	FL Record 1019	Available	-	-
Digital film	OSA Film Library	FL Record 1019 (HU_OSA_00002701.mp4)	Available		Access Copy, MP4 format