| Militaries abuses
at "Caucasus" check point
CHECHNYA, December
1, Caucasus Times - On November 29, Salman Arkhiyev, a local man of
Urus-Martan district was detained by the Russian servicemen at the check-point
"Caucasus".
By all accounts,
the young man's car was stopped while on his route to Ingushetia by
the militaries that ordered him out. The soldiers seized him without
any reason, the witnesses said, and took the man away.
"The militaries,
some of the drunk were searching the cars, checking papers as usual.
Then they grabbed a guy's documents and took him away," says 49-year-old
Tamara Madayeva. "Me and the women, who witnessed the scene asked the
soldiers why did they detain the guy, but they started shooting into
the air, swearing they 'gonna kill all of us,' and commanded to clear
the site," the woman said.
The people failed
to find out what was the reason for the detainment of Salman Arkhiyev.
"Caucasus" located
on the federal highway is an ill famed check point among the locals,
because the soldiers used to detain, batter young men, without any excuses
seal the traffic and demand the drivers to pay high fare, larger then
anywhere else.
Ruslan Adayev,
Caucasus Times, Chechnya
Memorial: official
data on the number of people abducted in Chechnya is underreported
Speaking today
at a press conference dedicated to the life in Chechnya after the so-called
presidential election Oleg Orlov, the head of the Memorial Human Rights
Center, said that more than 4,000 people had been abducted in Chechnya
since the beginning of the second Chechen war. According to him, the
majority of such abductions were committed by force structures controlled
by federal authorities. According to official data, some 400 have been
abducted in Chechnya so far this year. However, Memorial reports that
the number is at least 431 (incomplete data of Memorial!!!). At the
same time Orlov said that in order to imagine the real scope of the
Chechen tragedy, the figure of 431 shall be multiplied by 3.
[03.12.2003
15:01] The Chechen Times
Surge in Chechen asylum seekers as overall refugee claims decline
The number of people seeking asylum in European and other industrialised
countries has fallen sharply this year, but there has been an upsurge
in the number fleeing the war-torn Russian republic of Chechnya, the
United Nations refugee agency said yesterday.
Russian asylum
seekers, "the great majority" of whom are thought to be Chechens,
have now displaced Iraqis as the largest group of applicants for refugee
status in the 29 industrialised countries for which the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees has statistics.
Applications
from Russian nationals totalled 23,681 in the first nine months of
2003, more than doubling from just above 5,000 in the first quarter
to nearly 11,000 in the third quarter.
More than half
the claims have been lodged in Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Sizeable numbers are also going to Germany, Norway, Slovakia and Belgium.
However, UNHCR
notes there may be some double counting, since "a significant number"
of Russian asylum seekers move on and lodge new applications before
their claims in Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic are adjudicated.
Asylum applications
from Iraqis have fallen from 11,100 in the first quarter, when they
were the largest group seeking refugee status, to 4,100 in the third
quarter. Over the nine months, they remain the second largest group
after the Russians.
UNHCR said this
year had seen a steep decline in asylum seekers from Afghanistan,
Serbia and Montenegro, China and Turkey, but applications from Pakistanis
and Somalis had risen.
Overall, asylum
applications in industrialised countries fell by a fifth to 343,570
in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period
in 2002.
The UK tops the
league for asylum seekers this year (47,900), followed by the US (43,600),
Germany (38,900) and France (37,200). However, the number of applications
in the UK dropped 39 per cent from last year's level for the first
nine months. Applications to the US and Germany fell by 32 per cent
and 28 per cent.
[03.12.2003
16:48] The Financial Times
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