Jan 23, 2003 Posted: 15:36 Moscow time (11:36 GMT)
VLADIKAVKAZ - Chechen civilians continue to be abducted, beaten and killed
by Russian security forces, an international human rights group said Wednesday,
while about 20 Chechen women staged a protest in a neighboring republic
in a bid to draw international attention to the plight of their relatives.
The Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights said
that despite government assurances that the situation in Chechnya is stabilizing,
local human rights monitors continue to receive reports of abuses.
The Helsinki Federation, citing statistics from the Russian-based Memorial
group, said that 11 men disappeared from one district in the Chechen capital,
Grozny, in the first two weeks of January. On Jan. 14, four other people
were abducted near the central market, and numerous people were beaten,
including a pregnant woman, the group said in a press release.
Zura Betieva, 54, who took part in a protest in Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia,
bordering Chechnya, said she wanted to call attention to the disappearance
of her 30-year-old nephew Ilyas Kurbanov and his two friends.
"Their fate is unknown," said Betieva.
Russian troops insist that military abuses are not widespread, and that
all such incidents are prosecuted.
Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov told Russia's Echo of Moscow radio on
Wednesday that 26 serviceman, including four officers, were convicted last
year of crimes in Chechnya, ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Military courts
are considering 57 cases, including 14 on murder charges, two for rape,
and 18 on property theft, he said, according to ITAR-Tass.
Khadzh Seliyev, 67, who joined the women at the protest in Nazran said that
last October, people in camouflage and masks broke into his home and took
away his 26-year-old son, Beslan. Seliyev said he has been told that despite
the many checkpoints that his son's captors would have had to pass through,
"no one saw anything."
Wednesday's protests came as a European envoy who reports on Chechnya to Europe's
oldest human rights body was in the breakaway republic. Lord Frank Judd,
who reports to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has
long been critical of the Russian military's strong-arm tactics in Chechnya, and
has pushed the Kremlin to find a political solution.