Tea Gularidze, Civil Georgia / Pankisi Gorge / 2003-10-02 13:45:05 

Moscow Still Fails to Allay Chechens' Fears

Russian plane, which arrived in Tbilisi on September 29 to repatriate Chechen refugees willing to return to Chechnya, left Georgia with none of Chechens on the board. Russian authorities' second try to convince refugees living in Georgia's Pankisi gorge since 1999, to return to the war-torn Chechnya failed again.

Russian delegation, led by Stanislav Iliasov, the Minister for Chechen Affairs and Yuri Brazhnekov, the Deputy Minister for Emergency Situations visited Georgia on September 29-October 1.

Delegation visited Pankisi gorge, where according to the official data up to 3,700 Chechen refugees are living, on September 30.

"We offer them various kinds of assistance. Those who decide to return, will be provided with transport and money to repair their houses, or 350 000 Russian rubles [up to USD 12,000] to build new ones, to those who's houses were destroyed. We also will assist in solving other social issues as well, like unemployment," Yuri Brazhnikov, the Russian Deputy Minister for Emergency Situations told Civil Georgia.

The outdoor meeting with the refugees lasted for 2 hours. However Russia's promise of better future and financial assistance is not enough for the Chechens. Moreover they even refused to accept 20 tone of humanitarian aid, brought in Georgia by the Russian delegation.

"Although we live in hardship and almost starve, because the UNHCR is the only organization which assists us, and the Russian's aid would be great relief, we simply do not want anything from them [Russians]. Where were they before, during these four years?" Aslanbeg Aburzakov, Chechen refugee told Civil Georgia.

"Our only dream is to return to the homeland. But we do not trust Russians, because they kill Chechens without mercy. Russian army is still in our homeland and the war still goes on. We refuse to go back until the Russians are there. We still remember the horror of war," Chechen refugee Elza Varakhaeva, who lives in Pankisi gorge since 1999, told Civil Georgia.

"We brought warm clothes and food for the children and adults. We wanted to provide aid [to the refugees] before too, but could not do so because of the criminal situation in Pankisi. But after the anti- crime operation in Pankisi [held by the Georgian law enforcers last year], the situation has improved and now we are able to visit them and help every refugee," Russian Deputy Minister for Emergency Situations said.

"We only want Russians to uphold the security norms. Despite their assurances, we know that there is not peace in Chechnya. People still get killed with landmines. Although we are having quite hard time here [in Pankisi], at least we live in peace," Musa Kabragieli refugee from Grozny said.

This was the Russian delegation's second visit in Pankisi Gorge. Russian Deputy Minister for Emergency Situations Yuri Brazhnekov already visited Pankisi Gorge in June and tried in vain to convince the Chechen refugees to return.

This time the delegation was accompanied by the representatives of the Moscow-backed Chechen administration.

"It was decided that we will stay here for two more days, create a special group, in which the refugees could also participate, to discuss and work over the current problems together. The commission will keep functioning after we leave as well," Edilberg Uzuev, representative of the Moscow-backed Chechen administration told Civil Georgia.

Georgian authorities are interested in the Chechens' repatriation, as refugees in Pankisi are perceived as one of the threats to the shaky stability in the troubled gorge. Hundreds of Chechen militants found shelter in Pankisi from 1999-2002; they infiltrated the region with the Chechen refugees,. Georgian troops are still deployed in the gorge to maintain order.

"Indeed we do assist Russians to conduct the process peacefully and successfully. Chechens should return to their homeland one day. But the repatriation should take place on the voluntary basis," Georgian Deputy Interior Minister David Todua told reporters.

Many Chechens have already left Georgia and moved back to Chechnya, or left for third country, as their number almost halved after 1999, when up to 7,000 Chechens fled from the second war in Chechnya.

RUSSIA : Reporters Without Borders lobbies EU and OSCE about kidnapped journalist in Ingushetia / RUSSIE : Enlèvement du correspondant de l¹AFP en Ingouchie : Reporters sans frontières saisit l¹UE

PRESS FREEDOM

2 October 2003

International Secretariat Europe Desk

5, rue Geoffroy-Marie 75009 Paris France Tél : (33) 1 44 83 84 84 Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51 E-mail : europe@rsf.org Web : www.rsf.org www.press-freedom.org

RUSSIA

Reporters Without Borders lobbies EU and OSCE

about kidnapped journalist in Ingushetia

Reporters Without Borders called today on the presidents of the European Union (EU) Council and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to urge the Russian authorities to step up their investigation into the disappearance of the Agence France-Presse correspondent in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, Ali Astamirov, who was kidnapped by armed men on 4 July.

The appeal was made on the eve of the 4 October presidential elections in neighbouring Chechnya, which Astamirov also reported on, in letters to EU Council president Silvio Berlusconi and OSCE president Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who is also Dutch foreign minister.

There has been no news of Astamirov since he was seized in the Ingushetian capital, Nazran, by three armed men and driven off towards Chechnya. No ransom demand has been received by his family or by Agence France-Presse and the kidnappers have not tried to contact them. Neither those in charge of the case in Moscow nor the prosecutor¹s office in Nazran have made any significant progress in their investigations. His family, who believed he was still alive three weeks after his disappearance, are now no longer sure.

In the months before he was seized, Astamirov had received anonymous threats and had moved house for safety reasons. These threats, as well as the lack of any ransom demand, suggest he was kidnapped because of his work as a journalist.

LIBERTE DE LA PRESSE

2 octobre 2003

Secrétariat international Bureau Europe

5, rue Geoffroy-Marie 75009 Paris France Tél : (33) 1 44 83 84 84 Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51 E-mail : europe@rsf.org Web : www.rsf.org www.press-freedom.org

RUSSIE

Enlèvement du correspondant de l¹AFP en Ingouchie : Reporters sans frontières saisit l¹UE et l¹OSCE

Le 4 octobre, cela fera exactement trois mois que Ali Astamirov, correspondant de l¹Agence France-Presse (AFP) en Ingouchie, a été kidnappé. A ce jour, personne ne sait où se trouve le journaliste, s¹il est encore en vie, qui sont ses ravisseurs et quelles sont les raisons de son enlèvement. Reporters sans frontières, extrêmement inquiète de cette situation, a demandé à l¹Union européenne (UE) et à l¹Organisation pour la sécurité et la coopération en Europe (OSCE) de se saisir de ce dossier.

Reporters sans frontières a demandé à Silvio Berlusconi, président du Conseil de l¹UE, et à Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, ministre de Affaires étrangères des Pays-Bas et président en exercice de l¹OSCE, d¹interpeller les autorités russes afin qu¹elles mettent tout en ¦uvre pour obtenir des informations sur Ali Astamirov et pour le faire libérer.

Le 4 juillet dernier, Ali Astamirov, 34 ans, de nationalité tchétchène et père de deux enfants, a été kidnappé à Nazran (capitale ingouche) par trois hommes armés qui l¹ont emmené en voiture vers la Tchétchénie. Trois mois après cet enlèvement, aucune demande de rançon n¹est parvenue à la famille ou à l¹AFP et aucun ravisseur n¹a tenté d¹entrer en contact avec elles. Ni les enquêteurs chargés du dossier à Moscou, ni le parquet de Nazran en Ingouchie n¹ont obtenu de résultats significatifs au cours de leurs recherches. Si la famille a cru pouvoir affirmer, trois semaines après les faits, que le journaliste était vivant, elle n¹a plus cette certitude aujourd¹hui.

Dans les mois ayant précédé son enlèvement, le journaliste, qui couvrait également la situation en Tchétchénie, avait fait l¹objet de menaces anonymes et avait déménagé, craignant pour sa sécurité. Ces menaces, ainsi que l¹absence de demande de rançon, semblent confirmer que Ali Astamirov a été enlevé en raison de son travail de journaliste.

Pièce jointe : Auteur : RSF Europe - Publié le 2003-10-02

Russian dossier damns chechen leader

A classified police report from Chechnya catalogues alleged violence and extortion committed by pro-Moscow Chechen leader.

By Clem Cecil in Moscow

A confidential top-level Russian interior ministry document, obtained by IWPR in Chechnya, accuses Akhmad Kadyrov, Moscow's chosen leader in the troubled republic, of using systematic extortion and violence to get himself elected president.

The document, a report from a colonel specially seconded to Chechnya, was written a year ago and acquired this summer. It paints a frightening picture of the republic as a place where life is cheap, violence universal and in which armed men who support or oppose Moscow act with equal brutality.

The author, Colonel A Zhizhin, makes it clear that armed resistance to Moscow is continuing three years after the start of the most recent military campaign. He writes of a "sharp deterioration in the situation in the Chechen Republic over recent months" caused by "an increase in acts of terrorism and sabotage committed against federal forces, as well as in attacks against officers of the Chechen police".

Zhizhin goes on to warn, "The increased activities of the militants, Kadyrov's low popularity in the republic, and frequently incompetent actions of the federal forces cause a negative response from most Chechen residents who mistrust the policies of the federals authorities."

Kadyrov, who was appointed Moscow's man in Chechnya in June 2000, is set to be re-elected leader of the republic on October 5, in a poll in which he has no serious rivals.

Officials in the office of Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's main spokesman on Chechnya, called the document a forgery. However, it was obtained by IWPR from a senior Chechen police official and carried an appropriate serial number, which was hidden during photocopying by folding over the corner of the page, in order to protect our source. The sheer detail and precise dating in the document, as well as its even-handed criticism of all sides, also suggests that it is genuine.

Some Russian officials claim that the situation in Chechnya has stabilised in the year since the document was written and especially after Moscow's constitutional referendum in March. However, a spate of suicide bombings in the past year, claiming hundreds of lives, suggests that things are actually no better and may actually be worse.

Mikhail Burlakov, a former deputy in the Russian parliament, who comes from Grozny and was until recently head of the North Caucasus department of the nationalities ministry, told IWPR he had seen many similar documents and had no doubt that this was one was genuine. He said he believed the situation in Chechnya had deteriorated since the report was written.

Zhizhin signs the report as a member of the Criminal Police Internal Forces Operational Search Actions team. The latter (known in Russian by the acronym ORM) conduct what are a euphemistically known as zachistki, or "clean-ups", which have terrorised Chechen villages. He recommends that his information be used in future operations.

The Russian interior ministry, which commissioned the report, is in bitter competition with the domestic security service, the FSB, for authority in Chechnya. "There are tensions between these two organs at the highest levels and these trickle down to the ground," Burlakov said. This suggests that the report may have been part of a larger campaign by enemies of Putin's favoured man in Chechnya, Kadyrov, to undermine his standing in Moscow.

Certainly, the report details what amounts to supporters of Kadyrov organising a campaign of extortion against businesses, farms and bureaucrats "supposedly to raise funds for Akhmad Kadyrov's presidential election campaign", many months before the election was announced. Three men who did not pay their dues on time in the Vedeno region were murdered by masked men, Zhizhin notes.

The man mentioned as Kadyrov's main enforcer is Sulim Yamadayev, "deputy military commander" of Chechnya who is believed to control an armed group of up to 10,000 men.

"A group of armed men led by Khamzat Gayarbekov, who reports to...Yamadayev have arrived in Shelkovskaya District and have been collecting money from managers of state farms, industries, government offices, drivers and owners of oil delivery trucks," the colonel writes. In the last year, Yamadayev is reported to have quarrelled with Kadyrov and become a more independent force.

Zhizhin is scathing about the Chechen police force - supposedly his colleagues in the interior ministry - who are said to be loyal to Kadyrov and adopting, he says, a "wait-and-see attitude" as the political situation changes.

A portrait of Chechnya emerges as a place at the mercy of powerful warlords, who are a law unto themselves. Zhizhin describes a situation in which fighters loyal to notorious pro-independence warriors Ruslan Gelayev and Shamil Basayev still operate in the city of Grozny - which is believed to be under secure Russian control - and move freely in daylight in Basayev's home region of Vedeno.

"For most people in Chechnya, the meaning of life becomes serving one or other of the warring factions, ie Kadyrov, Yamadayev, Basayev and Gelayev," commented Burlakov. "Each of these men have about 20 strong men behind them who, in turn, have influence over hundreds and thousands of men, and so can raise an army, when necessary. It is nonsense to talk of there being only 300 fighters left in the mountains. It does not work like that."

Moscow only stands a real chance of imposing control over Chechnya if it can stem the flow of weapons to the rebels. Here too, Zhizhin's report belies claims that support for the fighters is drying up. He writes that there is a vigorous arms trade in Khasavyurt, the western region of Dagestan that borders Chechnya.

Zhizhin also notes that other rebel fighters have moved to the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia, confirming fears that the conflict in Chechnya is spilling across its borders into the rest of the North Caucasus.

Clem Cecil is Moscow correspondent for The Times (of London). Thomas de Waal in London contributed to this report.

To read a copy of the report in English go to http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/cau/cau_200310_198_1_memo_eng.txt To read the report in Russian go to http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/cau/cau_200310_198_1_memo_rus.txt

Ekho Moskvy, [BBC Monitoring]02 October 2003

Russian presidential envoy admits numerous human rights violations in Chechnya

[Presenter] The head of the human rights commission under the Russian president, Ella Pamfilova, admits that there has been no substantial improvement in solving human rights problems in Chechnya.

[Ella Pamfilova] There are violations there. We all know that: I have just returned from there. None of the reports that appear on the matter carry anything new for me. Visiting Chechnya, unfortunately we see that people do disappear there and that there are numerous other violations: regarding refugees, regarding compensation payments [for lost housing], regarding the creation of a joint data bank on missing people. The very first most important task is to develop an efficient mechanism for finding missing people so that people who have become desperate, who have lost their loved ones do not have to write dozens of appeals to dozens of authorities. Another most important thing that needs to be done is to prevent the disappearance of people in Chechnya. People should not be taken away without a sanction from a prosecutor's office and with recourse to the powers of local administrations.

Rights group reports continuing abuses

2 October 2003, Volume IV, Issue 35 CHECHNYA WEEKLY: News and analysis on the crisis in Chechnya

Just before Vladimir Putin's and Akhmad Kadyrov's recent visit to the United States, the independent New York-based monitoring organization Human Rights Watch released a twenty-eight-page report on "Russian Abuses in Ingushetia." The report, based largely on face-to-face interviews, provides fresh details about seven separate "zachistki" that took place in June in villages and camps housing Chechen refugees in Ingushetia.

The Human Rights Watch researchers found that these security sweeps followed a pattern long familiar in Chechnya itself: "Large groups of armed personnel, often arriving on armored personnel carriers, would surround a settlement and conduct sweeps or random checks at peoples' homes. In those security operations, at least eighteen people were arbitrarily detained; most of whom were not released until several days or weeks later, without ever receiving an explanation of the grounds for their detention. In other operations, federal forces appear to be responsible for killing one civilian and seriously injuring two others."

The full text of the twenty-eight-page report is available from the Human Rights Watch website, http://www.hrw.org <http://www.hrw.org/>.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Media Briefing

AI Index: EUR 46/077/2003News Service No: 2042 October 2003

Rough Justice: The law and human rights in the Russian Federation -- summary

Amnesty International is releasing today its third report in theyear-long campaign on human rights in the Russian Federation. Thereport, Rough Justice: The law and human rights in the RussianFederation focuses on the legal changes that the Russian Federation hasintroduced since it became a sovereign state in December 1991 and theirimpact on the human rights situation of ordinary people.

Over the past 12 years the Russian Federation has passed laws toreorganise its court system and strengthen the independence of judges.In 1998 the parliament elected a Federal Human Rights Commissioner -- orombudsman, to scrutinise the performance of the government.

The law has extended its reach in the Russian Federation, but flaws inthe way it is applied mean that it still offers little protection tomany people. This is a general problem for anyone living in the RussianFederation, but some people are especially far from the protection ofthe law, including members of ethnic minorities, some foreigners,prisoners, women and children. Continues: http://www.amnesty.org/russia/justice-report-eng.html