[BRIEF NOTE] On Canada's journalist on Chechen state television

[rfmcdonald]

The first time that I remember hearing about Chechnya was in 1994, when the CBC/Société Radio-Canada's Céline Galipeau bravely offered coverage of the First Chechen War on the ground. Since then, the standard litany of horrors has impressed itself in my mind. The latest news? A Torontonian is presenting the news on Chechen state television.

Chrystal Callahan received a dignitary's treatment the first time she arrived in Chechnya in 2007. She was there to film a documentary about the effects of war on a team of young Greco-Roman wrestlers and she ended up sharing coffee and ice cream with President Ramzan Kadyrov, a fearsome 30-year-old leader installed by the Kremlin months earlier.

When the Toronto native returned to the war-weary Russian republic this summer, the Chechen government made her a television star. Within weeks of her arrival, Callahan, a former model, was presenting the news on state-run Grozny TV.

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There are segments on the Internet of Callahan trying on traditional Chechen dresses or explaining how to tie headscarves, which are now mandatory for women visiting schools or government offices in the majority-Muslim republic.

Newspapers and camera crews from around the world have been calling for interviews as her profile grows.

But life as a celebrity in Chechnya seems increasingly out of touch with reports coming out of Russia's North Caucasus region, where conservative estimates put the combined military, insurgent and civilian death toll from two wars at more than 68,000, and access to the region is still shut down for frequent counterterrorist operations.

The human rights situation in Chechnya is, as could be expected, catastrophic, with massacres and tortures and assassinations and death squads and all. Despite this, Callahan is a booster of modern-day Chechnya.

Callahan's view of Chechnya, which she says could be her home for another year, is glowing. Her path through life has landed her in the pages of Vogue magazine as a Tokyo-based model and led her to the shores of post-tsunami Sri Lanka as an aspiring filmmaker.

She says her work is not censored. She claims to feel safer here than in many of the other cities she has lived in or visited.

"I lived in New York for almost a year. The time I was there, a model got shot in the subway. I really don't understand what people are comparing this to," said Callahan, who refused to give her age as anything but 20-something.

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"[Kadyrov] loves it. He loves splashy events, bright things, and he really rules Chechnya as if it's his own little kingdom," said [Moscow-based Human Rights Watch researcher Tanya] Lokshina.

But people should think about the consequences before they consent to sharing a stage and their fame with the 32-year-old leader, she said.

"I really think that a person, an artist with a strong conscience, would think twice before accepting an offer from Mr. Kadyrov as there are very serious allegations against him."