| Chechenpress
Thursday, 9 October 2003 Aggression against the refugees "Cleanup" operation in tent camp "Bart" On 30 September, the representatives of Russian, Chechen and local force structurestarted a cleanup operation on the territory of tent camp "Bart" located in Karabulak, Republic of Ingushetia. According to the servicemen, the special operation was carried out in response to the incident between the unknown people and a group of the Ingush OMON militiamen, which, ostensibly, took place a day before near the camp. However, the refugees told that nothing of the kind had taken place in the area of the camp. According to the displaced people, it has become customary to punish the refugees for anything that happens in the area of the tent camp, and terrorize the innocent people. Kidnapping in Roshni-Chu Musa Ganaev, a resident of the village Roshni-Chu, Achkhoi-Maeran region, was kidnapped on the night of 28 September by the employees of Russian force structures. According to Ganaev's relatives, several armed people in masks broke into the house and without any explanations took Musa in the unknown direction. Nothing is known about him since then. Firing in Shalazhi Several days ago the strangers opened fire at the house of the head of local administration in the village Shalazhi, Urus-Martan region, Chechnya, wounding his little daughter. The assaulters are not identified. Intensive bombardment of the mountain regions in Chechnya Russian aircraft subjected to intensive bombing the mountain gorges and forest areas of the Vedeno, Nozhai-Yurt, Sunja, Urus-Martan and Achkhoi-Martan regions of Chechnya. According to local residents, the bombardments are conducted almost every day. 4 people killed in Chechen-Aul At about 4:00 a.m. on 27 September 2003, the armed people in masks and camouflage shot 4 local residents in the village Chechen-Aul. According to the eye-witnesses, the victims of the Russian servicemen are two old men and their sons. Nobody knows what was the reason for this savage punishment. 12 families left to the mercy of fate At about 17:00 on 29 September, several displaced people were driven from the recently liquidated tent camp "Bella" to the camp "Satsita" located in Ingushetia. As it turned out, no arrangements had been made to receive the newly arrived refugees. So, 12 families of Chechen refugees - tens of people including more than 30 children were left to the mercy of fate. Information Centre of the Non-Governmental Organizations http://www.chechenpress.info/english/news/10_2003/11_06_10.shtml
Bella camp residents relocated to Satsita camp remain without basic necessities as yet INGUSHETIA, October 8, Caucasus Times - The residents of the former Bella camp displaced to another settlement in Satsita camp in Ingushetia were left without elementary conveniences including electricity and the heat. As of October 8, there were 150 tents set for the relocated persons from Bella camp. The migration service official repeatedly pledged all infrastructure services and facilities would be established in Satsita camp compelling the refugees to move there. According to Movsar Bitiyev, a local man, as yet there are no gas, electricity, heat in the set up tents where people have to live. "At first, we were being pressured by the official to leave Bella camp, now they apply the same tactic here," the man said. "In these two weeks over, we are left without the heat in the tents. Besides, our children are not allowed in a local school, ain't no places there, they said". The district Interior Ministry Migration service excused the situation reasoning the public utilities services overloaded before the season and therefore failed to complete all repair works in the camp. Malika Suleymenova, Caucasus Times, Ingushetia
9 October 2003,
Volume IV, Issue 36 CHECHNYA WEEKLY: News and analysis on the crisis
in Chechnya Reprorts suggest widespread election day abuses The experience of last March's referendum taught international election observers a bitter lesson: The Kremlin will use their mere presence at such a rigged affair as a seal of legitimacy, no matter what those observers actually report. Monitors from organizations such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe stayed away from last Sunday's presidential vote, viewing it as hopelessly tainted by the removal of all credible opposition candidates just twenty-four days earlier. Their absence, however, means that we now have less information from independent sources about what actually happened on election day. Nevertheless, sufficient information is available from both domestic and international journalists to make it clear that the election was far from free or fair. Ivan Sukhov of Vremya novostei observed that "the lists which show how many people have already voted and how many have yet to vote, and which any citizen has the legal right to read, were missing in almost all the polling places. In some polling places it seems that there were no lists whatever of those eligible to vote; the few who came to vote found that the workers at those polling places did not check names and addresses against a prepared list, but merely recorded on blank sheets of paper whatever names the voters gave them. The observers from the candidates and parties...sat on the chairs provided for them and meticulously carried out their prescribed function: They observed. Depending on the location, they did this with more or less noticeable facial expressions of alienation and disenchantment. 'Have there been any violations?' we asked one young lady, an observer for Buraev's campaign... 'Yes,' she quietly nodded, 'you know there have been.' 'Just what?' 'We can't tell you, we would have problems if we did.' A man of about 50 came up and explained the observer's obvious embarrassment: 'Young man, you understand that you are here as visitors, you take a look and then you leave--but we have to live and survive here. If I tell you today whom I voted for, tomorrow they will cut off my head." According to Russky kurier, "at every polling place were observers from Kadyrov's campaign staff, observing with interest how people were voting...spying on their ballots. Members of the election commission were working to persuade people to vote for Kadyrov." Sergei Shimovolos of the Moscow Helsinki Group told the Los Angeles Times that he witnessed many violations in the Shali district in southern Chechnya, such as voters casting ballots other than their own and independent observers being barred from observing the counting of ballots. Shamil Buraev, one of the few truly serious opposition candidates, told the radio station Ekho Moskvy that his staff found numerous violations of the election rules. The most common type of election fraud, he said, was to give a single voter multiple blank ballots--as many as ten. In some cases the voter had to present the passports of other citizens to whom he would ostensibly give these ballots, in others he did not even have to do that. Buraev also said that officials at several polling places in the Kurchaloi district denied entry to observers from his campaign. Said Bitsoev of Novye izvestia observed a throng of cheerful citizens in the center of Grozny, who turned out to be employees of a municipal utility. They told him that they were working as a "flying brigade of voters," traveling from one polling place to another as needed--wherever the number of real voters was especially low--in order to boost the apparent turnout. The website Gazeta.ru reported that Kadyrov violated the legal ban on election day campaigning by declaring before television news cameras when he arrived at his home neighborhood's polling place to vote on Sunday that "nobody but me will be able to bring peace to Chechnya." According to gazeta, "none of the electoral officials present dared to reprimand him." In Alkhan-Yurt, home town of former opposition candidate Malik Saidullaev (forced off the ballot by a controversial court decision on September 11), two reporters for the daily Moskovsky komsomolets were unable to find any Kadyrov posters, though they did find conspicuous graffiti proclaiming "Malik--our president." They wrote that the Saidullaev family home "resembles a fortress. It is surrounded by sandbags, on the roof is a machine gun...the security force numbers about 500, working in shifts." In Grozny, according to Moskovsky komsomolets, Kadyrov campaign posters had been hung on all the ruined buildings. The polling places displayed an apparently official poster showing all the candidates. Kadyrov was in the center, wearing a traditional Chechen "papakha" fur hat, while all the others were bareheaded. According to the official figures as of Tuesday, about 85 percent of the electorate showed up at the polls to cast ballots, and of these about 80 percent voted for Kadyrov. But there is substantial reason to doubt the claims of high turnout as well as of Kadyrov's alleged victory margin. A Chechen refugee in Ingushetia told Jim Heintz of the Associated Press that only thirty-two of the 850 adult Chechen residents of his camp accepted the government's offer of a free bus ride to a polling place within Chechnya, and that even most of these thirty-two were interested only in the free transportation and did not intend to vote. Olga Allenova of Kommersant reported that Grozny's main thoroughfare, Prospekt Pobedy, looked "dead" on election day: "There were no people and no cars on the streets....The liveliest place along the Prospekt is the market, but today there was not a soul there: Since the previous evening, retail trading within the city had been prohibited." According to Russky kurier, many Grozny residents left the city several days before the election--"not wanting to take risks and fearing attacks either from the rebel guerrillas or from the special services....Some scattered to rural villages, others traveled to neighboring Ingushetia....Some establishments gave their workers time off until Tuesday. Sukhov of the website Vremya novostei reported that "in Grozny--at least, in those places which this correspondent could visit without an official escort--there could be found no elevated zeal on the part of the residents. Overall the city looked dead; the crowds around the polling places consisted mostly of security guards and police." Agence France-Presse reported on October 5 that "despite efforts by the pro-Russian authorities to produce a festive atmosphere, with barbecues selling grilled meat outside polling stations and loud rock music blaring, AFP correspondents reported extremely low turnout. At Alkhan-Kala, a village southwest of Grozny, in the morning only one person was voting every half-hour. At a polling station in central Grozny, out of 1,099 registered voters, only 170 had voted by 1:30 p.m." According to Zaindi Choltaev (see the preceding article), the consensus among his contacts in Chechnya was that from 10 to 20 percent of the electorate took part in the voting. Summing up reports from its own monitors, the Moscow Helsinki Group announced that none of them ever saw more than three people at the same polling place at the same time. The Kadyrov-controlled broadcast media apparently used a last minute trick to try to boost turnout. Said Bitsoev of Novye izvestia reported that on the night before the election, a Grozny radio station broadcast a "sensational" piece of news: The federal election authorities had supposedly issued a last minute order reversing the exclusion of Malik Saidullaev from the presidential race. In the morning, of course, citizens found that this was untrue as soon as they arrived at their polling places and looked at their ballots. Many concluded that it had been a piece of deliberate disinformation designed to get them to come to the polls. The clumsy removal of all the credible opposition candidates, while ensuring Kadyrov's easy victory, is still seen by many as a tactical mistake. It "proves the Kremlin was afraid," Aleksei Malashenko, a Moscow-based expert on the politics of Islam for the Carnegie Endowment, told the Christian Science Monitor. "Putin could say 'look, there's competition, there's democracy.' But [the Kremlin] preferred to get their own president in Chechnya without any competition." Refugees face continuing hardships Russian and Ingush authorities have reached a compromise with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, enabling the former to close one of Ingushetia's five camps for Chechen refugees. According to a September 30 press release from the UN agency, at least some of the former residents of the Bella camp will now be allowed to live in the nearby Satsita camp. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what if any guarantees these refugees will have against further efforts to force them back into Chechnya. In an October 1 article for Prague Watchdog, Timur Aliev reported that the Bella camp's last two tents had been removed on that day. Most of its remaining inhabitants had been "moved out during the past two weeks," he wrote. "Some were sheltered in the nearby camp Satsita, and others returned to Grozny." The UN agency called the development "a positive step towards better cooperation between UNHCR and the local and federal authorities." It announced that it had provided 166 tents for the Satsita camp to house refugees transferred from the Bella camp, from which the authorities had cut off water, gas and electricity (see Chechnya Weekly, September 26). A spokesman for the agency said in Geneva that "UNHCR hopes that this more constructive approach, which took into account the rights and interests of all parties, will be replicated in the future, replacing heavy-handed tactics such as cutting off utilities." A September 30 article by Malika Suleymenova for the Caucasus Times gave a less hopeful picture, reporting charges by some families that the Ingush authorities were failing to provide gas or electricity to the Satsita camp's new residents. An October 6 article in Nezavisimaya gazeta reported that, according to Magomed Machulev of the Committee for the Affairs of Forced Migrants of Chechnya, only 12,000 refugees have returned to Chechnya since the beginning of 2003. By his estimate at least 56,000 remain in Ingushetia. Officials of the local branch of the Federal Migration Service gave a total estimate of 62,700 still in that province--almost 50,000 of whom were said to be living in places other than designated refugee camps. These calculations dwarf those provided by the Kadyrov administration, which claims that only 8,000 refugees are left in Ingushetia. Thousands of additional Chechen refugees are living in other south Russian provinces, or in nearby Azerbaijan and Georgia. The Nezavisimaya gazeta article, echoing reports in other media, noted that "in Kabardino-Balkaria anti-Chechen feelings have intensified during the last month....leading to large scale beatings of refugee students and persecution by the local police." Last week an aircraft of Russia's Ministry for Emergency Situations brought tons of humanitarian supplies to Chechen refugees in Georgia. When the ministry also offered to fly the Chechens home, they declined. Though Akhmad Kadyrov
has failed in his efforts to force all the refugees to return to Chechnya
before the October 5 election, both he and Russian President Vladimir
Putin continue to have an interest in reviving compulsory repatriation.
As long as tens of thousands of Chechen refugees visibly prefer to live
miserable lives as exiles, it is impossible to pretend that life in
their homeland has truly returned to "normal."
09 Oct 2003 16:01:00 GMTACT Appeal: Assistance to IDPs in Chechnya, North CaucasusElisabeth Gouel Action by Churches Together (ACT) - SwitzerlandWebsite: http://www.act-intl.orgAppeal North Caucasus - Chechnya Assistance to IDPs in Chechnya - EUNC-32Appeal Target: US$ 1,200,922 Geneva, 23 September 2003 The long-lasting suffering of the Chechen population continues and thesituation shows no sign of improving. Spread across the region asrefugees, internally displaced and to a lesser degree returnees, Chechenfamilies are still not finding a safe haven from all the troubles thatthe war has brought. The return to Chechnya that has been promoted bythe Russian Government does not seem to be entirely feasible due toserious accommodation issues as well as a lack of means for returnees tosupport themselves. ACT members Hungarian Interchurch Aid (HIA) and the Russian OrthodoxChurch Department for External Church Relations (ROC/DECR) have beenactively providing relief to the most vulnerable Chechen families for anumber of years. In the previous ACT appeal EUNC-31, they have tackledthe most painful issues of the Chechen population – lack of food,accommodation, health and education. High impact programs of the ACTmembers have left their mark in the region for there are not many aidagencies remaining in Chechnya due to volatile security situation. In this appeal, HIA and ROC/DECR are urgently requesting emergencyfunding from the ACT Alliance to be able to continue life-savingactivities as follows: - soup kitchens in Grozny- emergency food and non-food distributions- to finish reconstruction of an orphanage in Grozny- provision of winter clothes for orphans in Grozny- to finish school reconstruction in Grozny and distribute school kits The ACT Co-ordinating office requests your attention and support forthis deserving cause. Project Completion Dates:HIA - 31 March 2004ROC - 31 March 2004 _________________________________________________________ FOR THE FULL APPEAL
TEXT (PDF FILE), KINDLY VISIT THE ACT SITE. THANK YOU. Please kindly send your contributions to the following ACT bank account: Account Number – 240-432629.60A (USD)Account Name: ACT - Action by Churches TogetherUBS SAPO Box 26001211 Geneva 2SWITZERLAND Please also inform the Finance Officer Jessie Kgoroeadira (direct tel.+4122/791.60.38, e-mail address jkg@act-intl.org) of allpledges/contributions and transfers, including funds sent direct to theimplementers, now that the Pledge Form is no longer attached to the Appeal. We would appreciate being informed of any intent to submit applicationsfor EU, USAID and/or other back donor funding and the subsequentresults. We thank you in advance for your kind cooperation. (ends) ACT is a worldwide network of churches and related agencies meetinghuman need through coordinated emergency response.The ACT Coordinating Office is based with the World Council of Churches(WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Switzerland. |