Russia: Clock Running Out for Displaced Chechens in Ingushetia
(Moscow, December 26, 2002)
Russian authorities must not close tent camps housing tens of thousands of
displaced Chechens because there is still nowhere safe for them to relocate,
Human Rights Watch said today.
For the past month, Russian officials have been intensifying their campaign
to pressure displaced Chechens in Ingushetia to abandon their tent camps
and return to Chechnya. With the closure earlier this month of the "Iman"
tent camp in Aki Yurt, housing about 1,700 people, five camps remain in Ingushetia,
housing more than 20,000 people displaced by the Chechnya conflict.
Russian officials claim to the international community that all returns to
Chechnya are voluntary, and that they may provide some alternative housing
in Ingushetia to tent dwellers. But Human Rights Watch researchers on a recent
field trip to Ingushetia found that migration officials have placed enormous
pressure on displaced persons to leave the camps, and that most relocation
alternatives in Ingushetia were nonexistent. The 11-day mission also documented
escalating abuses
inside Chechnya, which most displaced persons cited as the main reason they
chose to remain in Ingushetia.
"Forcing internally displaced persons to return to the conflict zone, where
human rights abuses are the daily routine, violates international standards,"
said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe
and Central Asia division. "The fact that the Russian authorities chose the
midst of winter for evicting these people, many of whom have no alternative
housing, is barbaric."
Pressure in the camps
Every day, about 30 officials, representing the Federal MigrationService,
Ingush migration authorities, the Chechen administration, and the Federal
Security Service, make rounds in camps, going from tent to tent pressing
people to apply for relocation and explaining the advantages of moving to
Chechnya and the disadvantages of remaining in Ingushetia. They promise returnees
space in new temporary accommodation centers that are allegedly being built
in Chechnya, offer 20 rubles per person per day to those who plan to relocate
in Chechnya's private sector, and free transportation back to Chechnya. They
threaten those reluctant to leave with arrest on false drug and weapons possession
charges, and warn them that vital gas and electricity supplies will be cut
off to the camps.
Human Rights Watch received from the Federal Migration Service a list of
eighteen temporary resettlement alternatives in Ingushetia with the alleged
capacity to accommodate 224 families. None of the tent camp dwellers interviewed
by Human Rights Watch was aware of the list, or of the possibility of relocating
to a facility in Ingushetia.
Human Rights Watch researchers visited twelve temporary resettlement facilities
in the Karabulak and Sunzha districts that appeared on the Federal Migration
Service's list. With two exceptions all of them were either already occupied,
uninhabitable, or simply did not exist. Returnees to Chechnya face similar
problems. Human Rights Watch interviewed several returnees who had to go
back to Ingushetia because the promised accommodation was either uninhabitable
or already
occupied. Denied any state assistance, they are now living off the kindness
of neighbors.
Migration officials emphasize to displaced people that the camps' days are
numbered, and that tent dwellers would be better off leaving now rather than
awaiting a forced closure of the camps. In late October, Russian troops were
deployed near the camps, their presence understood by displaced persons as
a threat of force should they choose not to leave "voluntarily."
Some families have left the camps amid subzero temperatures. They told Human
Rights Watch that they were unable to withstand the pressure from migration
authorities and that they feared the consequences of staying: uncertain security
and miserable living conditions. Some families expressed fear that their
young children might not survive the freezing temperatures once the gas and
electricity were cut off.
The U.S. government, the European Union and the United Nations have all strongly
protested the pressure on tent dwellers and the closure of the “Iman” camp.
Yet, the Russian government has disregarded the concerns of the international
community.
Continuing violations in Chechnya
Most families, however, remain in the camps, preferring to tolerate the deprivations
of tent camps rather than face endangering their own lives and lives of their
children in Chechnya. Migration officials dismiss the security threats
that people continue to face in Chechnya. A Federal Migration Service official
told Human Rights Watch that "people also disappear and are being killed
in Moscow," and that the situation in Chechnya is returning to normal.
But Human Rights Watch continues to document extrajudical executions, forced
disappearances, and torture of noncombatants in Chechnya by federal soldiers,
and has found no evidence that officials are seriously investigating
or attempting to stop such crimes. Brief summaries of several of these cases
are listed below. Human Rights Watch also continued to receive numerous reports
of assassinations of Chechens working with the Russian authorities by rebel
fighters.
"The safety and welfare of the displaced seem to rank last among the Federal
Migration Service's priorities," said Andersen. "It seems to want to get
rid of the camps as proof that that the situation in Chechnya is returning
to normal, whatever consequences that may have for the people."
The fate of Aki-Yurt residents
While the deadline for the closure of tent camps is unclear, the closure
earlier this month of the Aki-Yurt camp leaves no doubt that Russian authorities
are serious about dismantling them. The fate of the camps' 1700 former residents
provides a good indication of what dwellers in other camps may soon expect.
In early December, all of the tents in Aki-Yurt were dismantled, gas and
electricity were cut off and all assistance to tent dwellers stopped. Several
reliable sources told Human Rights Watch fewer than one third of the camp's
1700 residents moved to Chechnya. Witnesses told Human RightsWatch
that former Aki-Yurt dwellers are still looking for housing in Chechnya,
squatting near temporary accommodation centers that were already full or
searching for space with Chechen villagers. Some of these people had returned
to Ingushetia when they failed to find accommodation in Chechnya. The majority
of Aki-Yurt families, however, remained in Ingushetia, trying to find accommodation
in the private sector.
Seventeen Aki-Yurt families continue to live in fourteen mud huts on the
land where the camp once stood. They use the wooden floors from the removed
tents as firewood, as the authorities have cut all gas and electricity. They
receive daily threats from the authorities that the mud huts are illegal
and will be bulldozed in the near future. The authorities are offering no
alternative accommodation.
Human Rights Watch calls on the Russian government to stop pressuring internally
displaced persons into returning to Chechnya and to ensure that they continue
to enjoy protection and humanitarian assistance in accordance with international
law. It also urges the relevant international agencies involved in the region
to protest any measures that may endanger the lives and well-being of thousands
of internally displaced people residing in Ingushetia. Human Rights Watch
calls on the international community to send observers to Ingushetia to monitor
and report on the situation of the internally displaced persons.
Some recent cases of human rights violations in Chechnya
(documented by Human Rights Watch in late 2002):
· At 2:00 a.m. on December 11, a group of armed Russian soldiers who
arrived on an armored personnel carrier (APC) entered the Grozny home (Staropromyslovski
district) of Isa Abumuslim, a fifty-one-year-old engineer who was bedridden
with a broken leg, and took him away. Russian authorities in Grozny told
his wife the next day that they knew nothing about the case.
· On the evening of December 2, masked and armed men speaking unaccented
Russian took fifty-two-year-old Ramzan Gizikaev, an official with property
department of the pro-Moscow administration in Chechnya. They took him from
his home in Grozny's Lenin district, in the presence of his wife and children.
His relatives have made inquiries, but to no avail.
· On the night of November 14, armed men in camouflage speaking
unaccented Russian and armed with silencer guns, entered the Grozny (Staropromyslovski
district) home of fifty-two year old Haj-Mohammed Zainubdinov, a construction
official in the pro-Moscow office of the Mayor of Grozny. The soldiers took
Hoj-Mohammed away, and his dead body, bearing marks of execution, was
found in a nearby vegetable garden the next morning.
· On the morning of November 5, 2002, several Russian APCs entered
the village of Novye Atagi. Masked Russian forces detained five men:
Hamzan Debizov, 28;
Ahmad Kasumov, 23;
Mohammed Kasumov, 26;
Bislan Taisumov,19;
and a fifth male, 20.
Russian officials have provided the families with no information about the
fate of the men.
· On October 27, armed men in camouflage came to Grozny (Zavodskoi
district) home of fifty-two-year-old Baiant Imaeva. When Imaeva opened the
door for the men, they hit her repeatedly on the head with the butt of a
machine gun, knocking her unconscious. When she woke up, she found
they had taken away her twenty-three-year-old son, Rasul Imaev, who had lost
his right leg in an earlier shelling incident. When a female relative
inquired with the Russian Federal Security Service about Rasul’s fate, officials
told her that they could “make her disappear, just as her brother.” The family
has received no information about Rasul’s fate.
· On November 12, another group of armed men, evidently Russian soldiers,
came to Imaeva's house, ordered her and two female relatives into a backyard
shed, and blew up the main house with explosives. No explanation was
offered for the destruction of her home.
· At 4:30 a.m. on October 23, Russian forces on APCs arrested five
men in the village of Chechen-Aul:
Ali Magomadov, 36;
Umalt Abaiev, 21;
Ismail Umarov, 27;
Saipudin Shageriev, about 23;
Rustam Zubkhajiev, about 24.
The bodies of the five men, shot to death, were discovered on November
9 at a garbage dump in the Vinograd settlement of Grozny.