The beautiful face of a beastly regime

Model Chrystal Callahan is an unlikely TV star in Chechnya. How did a nice Toronto girl become the distracting face of a repressive regime?

Chrystal Callahan, who began presenting news on state-run TV within weeks of arriving in Chechnya, insists she feels safe in the war-weary republic. | Said Tsarnayev / Reuters via The Star

Allan Woods, The Toronto Star | Full Story | 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.

But Callahan’s beautiful face is fronting for a beastly regime that has used force and fear to bring an uneasy calm to the republic after 15 years and two brutal wars against Islamic separatists. She insists she has complete journalistic freedom even if there are frequent mentions in every show of Kadyrov, a leader whose loyalty to Moscow has made him impervious to accusations of kidnap, torture, murder and a host of human rights abuses. >>

Published 09.08.09 02:00:00 -0500 GMT | Posted by Andrew Garib on 09.08.11 | |