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Appeal of journalists who were former hostages 29 October An AFP correspondent kidnapped in Ingushetia - Journalists who were former hostages call for his release in an initiative by Reporters Without Borders MONTREAL, Oct. 29 /CNW Telbec/ - We, the undersigned, were taken hostage in Lebanon, Philippines or Colombia, so we know the feeling of abandonment and isolation, the fear that we will never see our loved ones again, the constant uncertainty about what awaits us. We are therefore extremely concerned about the fate of our colleague, Ali Astamirov, Agence France-Presse correspondent in Chechnya and Ingushetia, who was abducted on July 4th by a group of armed men in the village of Altievo, 3 km from Nazran, the main city in Ingushetia, in front of fellow journalists. Aged 34, Chechen and the father of two children, Ali had been working for AFP for a year. Previously, he worked for a privately-owned radio station in Grozny and, from 1998 to 1 October 1999 (the date of the start of military operations), for the Chechen branch of the then independent Russian television station NTV. In the months prior to his abduction, he received anonymous threats and changed his place of residence out of concern for his security. The investigators in charge of the case in Moscow and the Nazran prosecutor's office in Ingushetia have learned nothing of any significance. Three weeks after the kidnapping, Ali's family felt sure he was still alive, but today they are no longer so sure. If no one knows the identity of his abductors, one thing is nonetheless certain: a journalist who was covering a terrible war and its accompanying atrocities has today been silenced. We call on Ali Astamirov's abductors to make themselves known and to release him as soon as possible. We also call on President Putin to do everything possible to find Ali and obtain his release without putting his life in danger. Roger Auque, journalist, hostage in Lebanon in 1987 Maryse Burgot, journalist, hostage in Jolo (Philippines) in 2000 Scott Dalton, journalist, hostage in Colombia in 2003 Jean-Jacques Le Garrec, journalist, hostage in Jolo (Philippines) in 2000 Jean-Paul Kauffmann, journalist, hostage in Lebanon from 1985 to 1988 Andreas Lorenz, journalist, hostage in Jolo (Philippines) in 2003 Roland Madura, journalist, hostage in Jolo (Philippines) in 2000 Ruth Morris, journalist, hostage in Colombia in 2003 Jean-Louis Normandin, journalist, hostage in Lebanon from 1986 to 1987 Philippe Rochot, journalist, hostage in Lebanon in 1986 Ingush president says 10,000 Chechen refugees want to go home Itar-Tass, Moscow, 30 October: Over 10,000 Chechen refugees living in Ingushetia now have filed applications that state their desire to return to their motherland, Ingush President Marat Zyazikov told journalists in Moscow today. However, the process is complicated by the lack of temporary accommodation centres, he said. "We are examining over 10,000 applications from people who want to go back to Chechnya," he said. "But everything grinds to a halt because of the problem of temporary accommodation centres." According to Zyazikov, today alone about 200 people will return to Chechnya. At present, about 54,000 refugees live on Ingush territory in private housing and tents, including about 8,000 people living in tent camps. Zyazikov stressed that at the same time, in October 2002 over 200,000 people [from Chechnya] lived on the territory of Ingushetia. "We are not forcing anybody out, we do not have strict deadlines for the return," Zyazikov said. The process of refugees' return to their motherland is voluntary, and all people are returning because they want it. Speaking about potential unification between Ingushetia and Chechnya, Zyazikov said that he "does not support this idea". According to him, "this is a very old, threadbare topic, which is from time to time promulgated by different forces". In Zyazikov's opinion, some forces will turn the unification of Chechnya and Ingushetia to their advantage as it will solve many issues, in particular, the refugee issue will disappear. Ingushetia and Chechnya were recognized as independent constituent parts of the Russian Federation in 1992 but the administrative border between them has not been defined. [An earlier report from ITAR-TASS, in Russian, 0811 gmt, quoted the head of Vladikavkaz detachment of the North Caucasus Border Department of the Russian Federal Security Service, Oleg Boyko, as saying that five Chechens have returned to Chechnya from Pankisi Gorge in Georgia through Verkhniy Lars check point.] By Damir Ahmed, IOL Chechnya Correspondent http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2003-10/30/article08.shtml GROPZNY, October 30 (IslamOnline.net) - The Russian military administration has banned Tarawih and prevented inhabitants of south Chechnya from performing the prayer, triggering a wave of condemnation of Chechen Muslims, particularly the elders. Russian media quoted an administration official as saying the ban was motivated by fear that independence-seekers would exploit the prayer to encourage more attacks against the Russian forces during the Muslims holy fasting month of Ramadan. The decision sparked off anger among the Muslim population, especially elderly Chechen Muslims. Dagestan Pravda reported that some of the elders sent a message to the Russian military administration to allow them to perform Tarawih prayer in mosques, but have not received any answer to date. The Russian military authorities also slapped a curfew in southern areas from 2100 pm up to 700 am, practically preventing people even from performing Fajr (Dawn) prayer. However, moving to the north of Chechnya, particularly the capital Grozny, where a larger number of Russian forces is deployed, Tarawih has not been banned. Pro-Moscow Chechen police tour mosques and detain those suspected of belonging to Chechen resistance. The Russian military administration has approved broadcasting Tarawih on local television. During Ramadan, Chechen men and women used to gather every day for Tarawih prayer, recitation of Qur'an and religious sermons. Iftar Chechen villages are famous for holding collective Iftars, with one family cooking for the rest of the village once during the month. In case there are more than 30 families in a village, two or three families could share in preparing one Iftar.
CHECHNYA, October 29, Caucasus Times - Several dozens residents of Pobedinskoye village started a picket of the administration office, protesting the abduction of local men. The protest demonstration was ensued as a result of recent abduction of Dudrakayev brothers by unknown enforcement agents. "On October 22, unidentified law-enforcement agents seized and took away two brothers, Said-Hasan and Said-Rahman Dudurkayev," a relative of the kidnapped persons told the Caucasus Times correspondent. "The gunmen severely battered Said-Rahman and threw him out their car in the vicinity of the village. The second brother's whereabouts is still unknown. We have demanded to report on the case almost in all governmental offices but in vain. We want to know who and why committed that action. Officials keep on saying, the case is under investigation." According to the locals the abducted brothers had no linkage with combats in the republic. They were known as true believers and were respected by all villagers. In spring of 2000 brothers' father, a renowned mullah, had been also abducted by the Russian militaries and is reported missing as yet. "The boys' old father seized three years ago by Russian soldiers, is probably dead. Now they abducted sons," an angry 48-year-old Khava Merzhoyeva said. "That was such a good, hard-working family. They were never involved in anything wrong. We demand to find and return Said-Hasan and to stop all those night "sweep" and killings of people," she said. Ruslan Adayev,
Caucasus Times, Chechnya ---------------------------------------
30 October 2003,
Volume IV, Issue 39 CHECHNYA WEEKLY: News and analysis on the crisis
in Chechnya
Chechen security sweep victims still alive? Many of the Chechens who have disappeared in "zachistki" security sweeps are still alive in Russian captivity, in the view of human rights activist Kheda Saratova. The head of the Vozvrashchenie ("Return") foundation told correspondent Aleksandr Kolesnichenko of Novye izvestia that the organization has assembled more than a thousand individual case files. Vozvrashchenie was created only a month ago in Grozny, for the purpose of finding as many of the kidnapped as possible. Ex-captives "who have been ransomed, or released thanks to family connections, have told about cellmates with 'beards down to the floor,'" wrote Kolesnichenko on October 27. Saratova told him that it can be dangerous for those without such connections to visit military bases in search of their imprisoned relatives: "If one simply goes to a military unit and says that such-and-such a person is with you and we can prove it, that person will not still be alive the next morning." The kidnapping cases on which Vozvrashchenie is working include several that took place after the presidential election of October 5. That vote was billed by the authorities as a decisive step toward "normalization." Estimates of total Dubrovka death total rises How many hostages did the Russian special services finally kill with the powerful gas that they used while storming the theater last October? Some independent estimates made toward the end of 2002 found that, if one includes those who died of related effects days or weeks after they were "rescued," the total number of deaths exceeds 200 (see Chechnya Weekly, December 17, 2002). A more recent investigation by the newspaper Versiya, which it published on October 21, found that "about 300" of the hostages are now dead. That is more than twice the figure that has come to be widely accepted. Moscow abandons ethnic Russians in Grozny The city of Grozny, founded as a Russian fortress nearly two centuries ago, now has only a tiny minority of ethnic Russian civilians. Unlike their Chechen neighbors, most of these Russians have no extended family networks and no ancestral villages to take refuge in; nearly all of them are elderly and have effectively lost contact with their children and other relatives. That is why they have not fled the shattered city as most of Grozny's other ethnic Russians did long ago. Anna Politkovskaya provided a typically poignant glimpse into this tiny community in the October 27 issue of Novaya gazeta. She found that "the Russians of Grozny...are forced non-migrants, sentenced to remain here for life. Living among people who have no rights, it is they who are most completely without rights. Among the utterly humiliated, it is they who are the very most downtrodden....The federal authorities...who used their pre-war tragedy to justify the so-called antiterrorist operation, have now renounced them." (The "pre-war tragedy" which Politkovskaya mentions is the quasi-anarchic attacks by Chechen militants and hoodlums on the republic's ethnic Russians in the early 1990s, sometimes including forcible expulsion from their apartments.) Politkovskaya visited what remains of the Russian Orthodox parish of St. Michael the Archangel, the church building of which now lies in ruins and is little more than a foundation surrounded by barbed wire. The parishioners have no clergymen, which for Orthodox Christians means a huge void in parish life. This is especially serious for the Grozny parish because it is not only a place of worship but also the city's only surviving social institution for ethnic Russians. What seems most painful to the aging community is that for the time being it has no cleric to perform funerals. In a shattering blow, the parish's Deacon Aleksandr was arrested in June for robbing and murdering three elderly Russian women in the village of Naurskaya in northwestern Chechnya. The deacon is half-Chechen, and he converted to Orthodox Christianity against his father's wishes at a time--in 1996--when nobody could accuse him of doing so out of opportunism. The parishioners believe that he is being framed by both the Putin administration and federal authorities. The parish's priest, Fr. Nazary, is also being sought by the police, for reasons that are not entirely clear. He has left Chechnya and has apparently found refuge in a monastery in the Odessa area. Politkovskaya visited a 90-year-old Russian widower, who together with his daughter is taking care of an 81-year-old Russian widow whose husband died in an air raid three years ago. That story is typical; ethnic Russians were concentrated in downtown Grozny and suffered especially heavily under the carpet bombing of the Russian air force in both the first and the second wars. Nevertheless, the Kremlin has done virtually nothing to create a reliable system of humanitarian aid for these increasingly helpless people, many of whom are handicapped. Organizations such as the Red Cross, according to Politkovskaya, are severely restricted by the Russian bureaucracy: Any false step could mean loss of what limited rights they still have to operate in Chechnya. In Politkovskaya's words, that leaves Grozny's increasingly desperate ethnic Russians as "people who not only sense that they are people without a motherland--but feel certain that their motherland has betrayed them."
The Jamestown Foundation
The average Russian may be weary of the Chechen war, but that does not mean that he likes Chechens. On the contrary, a recent poll suggests that Russians now have overwhelmingly negative attitudes toward Chechens. As reported on October 24 by the website Stringer-agency.ru, the poll by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion found that 67.2 percent of Russians "are convinced that Chechens understand only the 'language of force' and that attempts to talk with them 'as equals' are only taken as signs of weakness." Some 68 percent believe "that the next generation of Chechens will be even more hostile to Russians than the present one." The Chechens continue to be the most disliked ethnic minority among Russians, with the Azerbaijanis in second place.
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