CHECHENS IN MOSCOW

By Waclaw Radziwinowicz

A majority of Chechen men since the siege of the theatre doesn't leave their houses. Ekho Moskvy radio asked its listeners if the authorities should urge Chechen refugees to leave Russia. 81% answered to this - yes, they should.

Ashab's and Yusup's mother gets up everyday from bed at 6 am. She takes their jackets from a coat-hanger and brings them to the kitchen. Yusup, since the attack on theatre at Dubrovka almost doesn't leave the house. Normally his jacket is OK. But, the jacket of 13-year old, stubborn Ashab needs to be watched. So, Tamara Kantayeva threads a needle.

Sincere confession relieves pain

Hussein Ibragimov, unemployed historian, graduate of the Grozny University, acquaintence of Tamara had trusted a station police constable. They came for him, just after when Movsar Barayev's commando stopped the Nord-Ost spectacle. Khusein didn't want to open, throught the locked doors he was explaining that he was afraid.

The constable from the Danilovskaya police station calmed him down: - Now they didn't give us any instruction to plant drugs on you!.

Hussein opened and went with the policemen to the station. There, he was waiting a long time in line, because already then, they were hauling Chechens from the whole Moscow to police stations, fingerprinting and photographing them.

- Two weeks later, they came back for one more time. They were explaining that they have to take my fingerprints again. Well, I went with them again. They soiled my hands and shirt with black ink, took pictures of me, and released me.

If Hussein's clothes' pockets were sewn, probably he would had no problems.

On the street, not far from the station he was picked up by a police patrol. They took him by the elbows and entered a hair-dresser shop nearby. They searched him in the front of some hair-dressers and from a side pocket of his jacket they took out a small silver packet. Later, at the police stations they said that they found in it 0,6 grams of heroin and Hussein will get for it a minimum 2 years.

He spent the night in the "obyezyannik" (monkey room), as these grated cages are called in Russia, the arrested are kept in them at the police stations.

In the morning they took him to the prosecutor office. He was interrogated there by the young prosecutor Daria Repina, a woman with a strange sense of humour. He got scared by this slogan on the wall: "Sincere confession relieves pain".

He got dumbfounded, when after a short interrogation he was released by the prosecutor on the condition that he won't leave Moscow. He got even more stupefied, when he heard from her at the end, that he shouldn't be surprized, that Simyenikhin and Ivanov, those who detained him, will be put behind bars.

Their found their match

- Just after, when this nightmare in the theatre at Dubrovka had begun, the Moscow police get an order to check out all the Chechens who live in Moscow. A huge job, because there's 100,000 of us here, maybe more, - says the lawyer Abdulla Khamzayev and adds: - They came here too.

He opened only because he saw through the doors' eyehole this constable who was known to him. A man in plainclothes, who
accompanied him explained that "they have an order from their superiors to check out all the Chechens".

- Who are you? - jumped on him 65-year old Khamzayev, who addresses everyone by "you".

- Alosha.

- You gonna be Alosha for me when I'll invite you for a tea, but I don't feel like it.

Khamzayev, son and grandson of tsarist officers, had had worked for 30 years in the Soviet prosecutorship. In the 70's he solved the Moscow's crematory case, which many other prosecutors weren't able to handle. He sent to prison persons who were robbing dead bodies, breaking off gold teeth from corpses. In the early 90's, as a lawyer then, he was preparing defence of Gennady Yanayev, the leader of the failed anti-Yeltsin putsch.

Now Khamzayev is becoming famous again. At the Northern-Caucasian Military District court in Rostov-on-Don he represents the family of the murdered 18 years old Chechen girl Kheda Kungayeva at the trial of colonel Yuri Budanov.

The lawyer, a big man with a huge grey hairdo shouted at Alosha and policeman: - I will sue you and your superiors at the European Court. I will prove that they conducted ethnic cleansing.

- You see Waclaw, I'm sending to courts these law cases of 200 Chechens illegally arrested, stripped searched, fired lately from work. - Khamzayev leads me to a room, where his secretary enters piles of documents to their computer. - One day, everything from here will reach Strasburg.

Color of a lipstick

- A majority of our men since the attack on the theatre doesn't leave their houses at all - tells me Tamara. - They don't have a chance to reach their places of work anyway. Some take that very hard. My neighbour Musa, a healthy guy, from this feeling of helplessness got a heart attack. It's very hard for the men, because we used to think that a Chechen who can't support his family is worth nothing.

Tamara invented for herself some rules of survival in this hostile city. She doesn't have a permanent or temporary registration (propiska) paper to live in Moscow.

In her passport it's written: "Place of residence - the city of Grozny". If they detain her with papers like that, they will take her to a police station and cook up some accusation.

So, Tamara cut off her very long, almost to her waist, black hair. She doesn't tie this short hairdo with a head-band anymore, as she used to.

As many Russian women, she's begun to wear a red lipstick. Since the attack on the theatre she doesn't wear skirts, but pants, and no bright colors. Dark green-grey jacket, and the same scarf.

When I have go by subway, I first look where policemen are standing. They have these red rims on their hats, so they can be seen from far away. I try to find an exit without them, but now they are everywhere. I try to disappear in the crowd - Tamara is telling me. - The most difficult is to learn not to look at the policemen eyes, because this provokes them. Here in Moscow, during the terror era, people had to learn this. We, in the Caucasus keep our heads high, look at the eyes who we meet. But here, this habit betrays us - finishes sadly Tamara.

Bomber has landed

On the radio ad about the Nord-Ost musical it was repeated: "Every night, a full size bomber lands on the stage!" The ad sounded menacingly, but the residents of Moscow weren't afraid of it. They didn't associate it with 9/11 nor with any events that were taking place in Chechnya. The city was far away from the war in the Caucasus, and it didn't want to know about it.

After the siege of the theatre many residents of the capital have understood that the war had came to them. Many had reacted with aversion or even hatred to "black-haired" men.

Tamara, who makes money as a cleaning lady, immediately has lost her work. - From people, whom I worked for almost a year I heard: We've seen you enough on TV and we don't want, that you would gad more around our house". Others phoned and advised me to go back to "my bandit-country", as fast as possible.

Tatiana Shifrina who teaches Ashab and his one year older sister Fatima, Russian language, in the school at the Committee of Public [Civic] Help has lost his mother in the theatre at Dubrovka. She wanted, that at the funeral, all mothers of her Chechen children from her grade could come. The majority of mothers didn't reach the cemetary, because on their way to it, on the subway, they were detained by policemen. Tamara was able to arrive there. - THEY come even here! That's impudence! - welcomed her at the cemetary some neighbours of the deceased. Shifrina barely was able to calm them down.

Ekho Moskvy radio asked its listeners if the autorities should urge the Chechen refugees to leave Russia. 81% said yes, they should.

"Even a mouse won't slip through"

On Saturday, on the 26th of October after the storming of the theatre, when the Moscow's media announced that all police forces were dispatched to search for terrorists, who could had been hiding in the vicinity, on the nearby Kashirskaya Highway, a wedding cortege of "new Russians" showed up. A police vehicle with flashing lights and siren on, was clearing a way for Roll-Royces and Mercedes' cars that were in it.

A few hours earlier, ambulances transporting from Dubrovka dying hostages were getting stuck in the street jams. Nobody was clearing a way in the front of them.

In the capital everyone knows that here, you can hire a police car for $200 USD. You need only to make a deal with its driver. On that Saturday that cost probably a lot more.

A few day later, in the evening, we went with a photoreporter to the square of Three Stations to take some pictures of policemen checking out passports of visitors to the capital. Bosses of the Interior Ministry were announcing then on TV, that the capital is perfectly guarded and so that "not a mouse will slip through".

On the Leningradskaya Station we haven't met even one policeman. On the neighbourly one, the Yaroslavskaya we also looked for them a long time. Finally, we found them all in one spot. They were blocking an entrance to the platform on which the train to Ulan-Bator (capital of Mongolia M.L) was waiting. On this square in the front of platform a crowd of panicked Chinese with huge travelling-bags was swirling. The policemen allowed them to enter the platform only when those
Chinese had thrown some money for their bribe.

After the siege of the theatre at Dubrovka by terrorists, pollsters asked the residents of capital if they hope that the law enforcing organs can guarantee their safety. 92% didn't have that hope.

Let the water out from a lake

- People panicked, they know that the authority can't defend them - says Khamzayev. - Now, they believe only in radical, brutal methods. Not to allow Chechens to live in Moscow, chase out all of them, to the last one. Accordingly to this old Mao's rule, who was saying: "You want to catch a fish, let the water out from this lake".

A spetsnaz trooper, who participated in the storming of the theatre thinks, that him and his colleagues "have done just the beginning of work" - Now it's needed to clean Moscow up and its surrounding areas from these "Chekhs" (federal soldiers who fight in the Caucasus call Chechens like that). To take all of them by hair and throw behind 101 km of MKAD (highway that bypasses th capital). As they did it in 1980, shortly before the Olympiad, with homeless people and prostitutes - recalls the spetsnaz trooper.

Alexandr Prokhanov, the editor-in-chief of the nationalistic weekly Zavtra calls for immediate confiscation of properties of these rich Muscovite Chechens. According to him, people from Barayev's commando, before their attack on the theatre, "resided in Chechen hotels, eat in Chechen restaurants, visited Chechen casinos and brothels". Now, these properties needed to be taken away from their owners because they are associates in crime.

Rich Chechens, like Malik Saydullayev who controls the Russian Lotto, Musa Bazhayev the chief of the company Alyans Group, Umar Dzhabrailov the owner of Radisson-Slavyanskaya hotel and the chain of capital's gas stations have decided to wait.

They don't want any official contacts with journalists. They count, that after emotions cool down they somehow come to terms with the authorities, like three years ago, after those explosions in Moscow's apartments.

"Chekhs", they know how to talk, like no-one else. And they always outsmart any partner. We captured Khoz-Akhmed Nukhayev, the godfather of Chechen mafia in Moscow 11 years ago. He got 8 years. He had done a few weeks. Now he lives in Baku. The whole file on his case has vanished without trace. He's "clean". "Chekhs" have to be chased out - assures me an officer of Moscow investigative police department.

- Both our nations are divided by fear, and 150 and maybe 200 thousands victims of war - asserts prof. Ruslan Khasbulatov, chairman of the Council of the Russian Federation in the early 90's.

- Russians and Chechens won't be able to live together anymore - he adds.

Into the steppe?

It's so hard for me. Without the registration, without work. For this one lousy room with kitchen, I must pay $200 USD per month. I would love to come back to our house, but there's no house. - Tamara shows me a picture - Look, here, you see, a gas stove is not destroyed.

Her house on 13th Krieking street, in the Zavodsky district of Grozny, was destroyed by two air bombs in the fall of 2000. Soon after, an air raid had also destroyed the school no 21, in which she used to worked as a psychologist. Teachers who survived were burrying remains of colleagues and students for a couple days.

A few days later, after this bombing raid Tamara had had taken her children to a refugee camp in Ingushetia.

She couldn't take care of 17 year old Zaurbek then. He went to Grozny to look for his father, who disappeared at the begining of war. Luckily, she found out soon enough on which checkpoint they detained the boy. She borrowed money, from all she knew. For only 4 thousand roubles she ransomed Zaurbek from the Russian soldiers, in not really bad condition. He had only one broken rib and his two front teeth were filed off with a file.

It became clear that also Ingushetia is to close to war. She decided to flee to Moscow, to her friends. Since then she was thrown out from her apartment a few times, she had to spend many nights on a train station. She doesn't remember how many times she had to ransom herself from the police patrols.

Zaurbek left Moscow for Chechnya on the 23rd of October. He went to his father, who after two years showed up in Grozny - I don't know, where he was during all that time. Maybe he was fighting somewhere in the mountains.? Maybe he was in a Russian jail, I'll never know that for sure. Before Zaurbek was able to get into Grozny, my husband died. I couldn't go to the funeral. That's a shame.

- And I don't know - sighs Tamara - if Zauberk should now stay in Chechnya, or if he should come back to Moscow. They are hunting people there, here they are hunting people too. They say that for us, the Chechens, a place could be found only in Kazakhstan, there, where our parents were exiled in the 40's. There's this empty steppe, probably poverty, but maybe, somehow it would be possible to rebuilt some life there.

From the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza Dec.11, 2002 issue (translation by Marius L.)