| 2003-10-08 18:30
Aarab states consider Chechen presidential elections legitimate MOSCOW, October 8, 2003. (RIA Novosti). The elections of the Chechen President were "legitimate, free and democratic", head of the Arab League's mission in Moscow Said al-Barami said. The presidential
elections in Chechnya took place on October 5. On Tuesday the Chechen
Central Election Commission announced the official election of Akhmad
Kadyrov to the post of the Chechen President. http://www.kavkazcenter.com/russ/article.php?id=11760 (my tr) Arab regimes recognized the farce in Chechnya as democratic!!... Election for president of Chechnya has passed legitimately, freely and democratically". This kind of evaluation to this taking place farce with so-called "election" gave the head of the Arab League mission in Russia Said al-Barami at the meeting with the chairman of Central Electoral Committee of Russia Aleksandr Veshnyakov. "People voluntarily came to this election with hope for peace and stability in the republic" - said the head of the AL mission. - "We are satisfied what we saw in Chechnya". This fact calls to the attention that this view of the AL representative in this electoral farce in Chechnya, organized by the Kremlin, is more than absurd, if one considers that not even in one Arab country, which the AL league represents, in their entire history any democratic elections were carried out, and all the Arab states are either hereditary monarchies or dictatorial regimes. 2003-10-08 20:28:09 "People Are Very Tired" A journalist shares his first impressions of Chechnya A group of 37 observers has watched presidential elections in Chechnya. Vladimir Solovyev, NTV anchor and member of the RF presidential Human Rights Commission, headed by Ella Pamfilova who was part of the group, shared his impressions of Chechnya and the latest election on the phone with MNs Yulia Larina: "We were divided into several teams, our task being to see for ourselves how the voting was organized. We did not confine ourselves to what the local elections commission offered us, but also followed our own agenda. We visited a dozen or so polling stations both in Grozny itself and in the Urus-Martan district. "We were accompanied by officers from the 3rd Special Task Company. They are ethnic Chechens serving under contract with the Defense Ministry and fighting on Russias side. Whenever these guys come to visit in Moscow, although their papers are in order, they are detained by police who claim that their commanders Hero of Russia decoration is a fake. I am going to make a TV program about them. "The weather was wonderful. It was a bright sunny day. Convoys were moving at a very fast speed. Sappers were at work. But you soon get used to this. Firearms are about as common as cellphones in Moscow. This no longer surprises anybody. Neither is anyone surprised when 20 to 40 men, armed to the teeth, jump out of a vehicle, disperse, and take up defense positions. People go about their life as before. An improvised explosive device was discovered by the roadside in Grozny; a stretch of the road was sealed off, sappers were at work while 20 meters or so from the armored personnel carrier that had blocked the path there was a small cafe where people were sitting quietly, eating, drinking, and enjoying life. "Saturday night a polling station came under rocket fire. Luckily, no one was killed. Later on we went in to look at the damage. The following day, by the afternoon, 60 percent of eligible voters had already cast their ballots. People came to see what had happened at night and at the same time to vote. "The polling stations were very tidy and orderly, recalling the Soviet era. Not to mention observance of the law. It was strictly observed. There was no pressure exerted on anyone. I was struck by the number of people who had come to vote - considering that when you move from one population center to another you dont see very many people, and there are very few cars around. But the turnout was quite high. You could see that people were hungry for a normal life, when they can wear their best clothes and go out - even if this is only to vote: What is important is to be able to go to something like a community center and socialize. "Election officers at the polling stations themselves were very obliging. Many commission members wore something showing their party affiliation: I saw Union of Right Forces badges, a large number of people wearing Russian Peoples Party tee shirts, and there were representatives of United Russia. The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) is unpopular here: I dont think there is a single LDPR follower in Chechnya. Neither do the Communists have much of a following in the republic. "What struck me were some apparently minor things. There is no central heating. In schools, which also doubled as polling stations, heating stoves are installed. But children are eager to study. A school that can accommodate 275 schoolchildren has a student body of 500. All of this years school-leavers but two went on to colleges or universities. Schoolmasters draw a fairly good (by Russian standards) salary: from 1,700 to 3,500 rubles a month. Teachers are also strongly motivated. "Grozny looks appalling. Grozny is a black page in Russian history. It is a city where there is not one unbroken window, but then the areas around all local landmarks are paved with tiles: city hall, a television station, and a fountain. Another thing that struck me was a five-story building from the Khrushchev era: The building was almost completely destroyed but the first floor was painted and apparently turned into a cafe called Uyut, or Comfort. "I did not meet with either Kadyrov or his opponents. I felt that seeing them would be wrong. It was very important for me to talk not with officials but with ordinary people. The people are of course very tired of everything. They simply want peace and order. They went to vote because that was really important for them. Chechens express a spectrum of sentiments: Sometimes their views are poles apart. Some areas were left virtually untouched while others were ravaged by the war. One thing is clear: This is a region that defies easy solution. I am afraid that the new page that is opening now with the election of a president will bear an imprint of past history. Here, the federal center is called upon to show wisdom and statesmanship. Also, it is critical to see where the money is going, making sure that it helps the people. But even now there are no starving people or beggars. People told me that life was difficult. But they were proud. They were proud of the place where they lived and they did not want to leave. "This has been
my first visit to Chechnya. It is a very beautiful place. I could see
just how beautiful Grozny used to be and what we have done to it."
More kidnappings in Ingushetia According to reports from the Union of Chechen Non-Governmental Organizations four Chechen refugees were kidnapped by Russian militants in village Ordzhonikidzevskaya, Sunzhenskiy region, on October 7. As reported, militants came to the village on few cars. They started disorderly shooting. After that they broke into the house where refugees lived. They took four young men and gone in unknown direction.
[08.10.2003
15:49] Prima News agency
Thursday, Oct. 9, 2003. Page 3 The Moscow Times Helsinki Group Says Chechen Vote 'Farce' By Anna Dolgov Special to The Moscow Times A leading human rights organization Wednesday accused the authorities of staging large-scale falsification of voting in Chechnya's presidential election to ensure the victory of Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin-favored candidate. The Moscow Helsinki Group said that after seeing deserted polling stations, it considered official reports of a turnout of around 85 percent to be a crime and a "shameful farce." Major international organizations refused to send observers to the Sunday balloting, where the victory of Kadyrov, the pro-Moscow head of the Chechen administration since June 2000, was seen as predetermined. But the Moscow Helsinki Group sent unofficial monitors to watch the voting. The group reported scores of minor violations, but said they all paled in comparison with the sharp discrepancy between the 85 percent official turnout, and the presence of no more than two or three people at any one time at polling stations throughout the day. Election officials gave the same explanation everywhere, insisting that the monitors arrived at the wrong time, just missing big crowds of voters, or being too early to catch the next flow, the group's executive director Tatyana Lokshina told reporters. "At 9.30 a.m. it was a bad time, at 10.30 a.m. it was a bad time, at noon it was a bad time and at 5 p.m. it was a bad time. For some reason voters would always came in just before you, or shortly after you left," Lokshina said. "I haven't seen a more disgusting, more shameful farce in my life." The head of the Central Electoral Commission, Alexander Veshnyakov, conceded later Wednesday that some irregularities had occurred. He insisted that amid continuing unrest in Chechnya, minor violations should be pardoned. "Name me at least one example in the world where elections held in such conditions have been perfect," he said. But he deflected questions about voting violations, saying that observers who had attended the election were in a better position to comment. Representatives from the Commonwealth of Independent States, the League of Arab States and the Islamic Center for Human Rights -- the only officially-registered international observers of the election -- praised the vote during a joint news conference with Veshnyakov. "We saw, with our own eyes, people waiting in lines to vote," said CIS Executive Secretary Yuri Yarov. Other violations reported by the Helsinki Group included: Kadyrov's campaign posters decorating polling station walls; people coming in with stacks of passports and voting for their relatives; newlyweds handed envelopes with cash prizes from the Kadyrov administration at a polling station; an electoral official leaving with ballot boxes and locking himself in a room with the head of the local administration. "As a lawyer I
would say that we are dealing with a massive criminal offense," said
Helsinki Group expert Sergei Shimovolos. "And I don't know what to do
about it: Usually, when a crime is committed, there are guilty parties.
But here, thousands of people have been involved in the wrongdoing." FRANKFURT, October 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Human rights groups Wednesday, October8 , accused the West of ignoring blatant and state-sanctioned abuses in Russia for the sake of improving relations with President Vladimir Putin, as Russian rights watch-dogs released a book documenting hundreds of cases of civilians killed or abducted by Russian troops over a small stretch of the war in Chechnya. Speaking at the world's largest book fair in Frankfurt, which this year is turning the literary spotlight on Russia, advocates said human rights abuses were still rife despite some improvements over the past few years, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). The accusations, centering on the Chechen conflict, freedom of information, the situation of women and children in jail and ethnic minorities, came from Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders and the Glasnost Foundation, a Moscow-based organization dedicated to protecting freedoms. Amnesty's Peter Franck said it was a "scandal" that at E.U.-Russia talks in Saint Petersburg earlier this year, the European leaders "were just pleased to get Chechnya mentioned in the final declaration" -- but in reference to drugs. He said they preferred to focus on Russia's role in the war on terror than on what was happening in the troubled Caucasus republic. Franck said that although the situation in Russia had improved in the past 20 years, notably with laws to protect rights, "practice and bureaucracy are still working like the old system." "There is still a significant deficit in the culture of human rights," he told a press conference. Children were often jailed for minor offences; police were corrupt, often because they were badly paid; too many women were in jail; ethnic minorities were regularly harassed. In Chechnya, there were still disappearances, killings and rapes, he said, adding that this year, around 240 people had disappeared by May 2003 alone and that was only according to official figures. "A Friendly Chat" Glasnost Foundation head Alexei Simonov said Western countries understood pressure on Russia to be "a friendly chat" with Putin who would assure them that human rights abuses were not his fault. Juergen Doeschner, of Reporters without Borders, said many leaders in the West believed that although Russia was not yet fully democratic, at least it was "on the right track." "From the point of view of freedom of the press and freedom of opinion, we believe it is on the wrong track," he stressed. Doeschner accused Putin of trying to control and exploit the media which would feel under increasing pressure ahead of next year's elections. Pressure on journalists came from local governments and corrupt businesses too. Prosecutions for reports deemed as unacceptable did not always end in a conviction, but forced reporters into a kind of self-censorship, he said. Doeschner also singled out Chechnya, pointing to official restrictions placed on journalists covering the region and highlighting the case of Ali Astamirov, a reporter of Chechen origin who has worked for AFP and has been missing since being kidnapped in neighboring Ingushetia in July 2003. An anti-Chechnya war Russian journalist dismissed Sunday, September 28, as "a political scandal" the fair administration decision to retract an invitation to him to the much-celebrated event. "The Frankfurt Fair administration has recently sent me a letter in which it regretted retracting an invitation extended months ago to participate in the prestigious fair along with a Russian media delegation," the German Der Spiegel magazine quoted as saying Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the Moscow biweekly Novaya Gazeta. "People Live Here" Meanwhile, Russian human rights watch-dogs issued a direct challenge to Putin Wednesday by releasing a book documenting hundreds of cases of civilians killed or abducted in Chechnya. The first volume of "People Live Here" - a sign frequently posted by civilians over the rubble of buildings in the republic's capital Grozny - will be released to the public at large at the Frankfurt book fair on Sunday, October 12 . The 542-page volume covers abuses recorded from eyewitness accounts by activists working in Chechnya from July to December 2000 - a period in which Russia's main attack on the Chechen Caucasus republic had been completed. It opens with a quote from Putin recorded during his October 2001 visit to Brussels in which the visibly agitated Russian leader brushed aside a reporter's question about rights abuses in Chechnya. "Whose rights" are we abusing, Putin demanded. "Give me names, records, family names. We should be speaking the same language instead of using cliches," he argued. "In part, this work was provoked by Putin's comments," said political commentator and author Viktor Shenderovich, who contributed a biting back-sleeve summery to the text. The volume documents the cases of 489 Chechens killed during the six-month stretch. This includes 70 fighters who died in fighting and the book's authors assume that most of the rest were civilians killed by Russian troops. It then lists the cases of hundreds of people abducted in the war and interviews with their families and other eyewitnesses. The authors said most of the abductions and killings have been officially confirmed by prosecutors but for the large part never reported by Russian media. "This is not a work of literature -- this is a book that was dictated to us by the people of Chechnya," said one of the volumes co-authors Dmitry Grushkin. "No on will ever be able to say anything more specific or tragic about Chechnya than this book," Grigory Yavlinsky, a presidential candidate and head of the liberal opposition Yabloko party, told reporters. The small mountainous republic has been ravaged by conflict since1994 , with just three years of relative peace after the first war between Russian forces and Chechen fighters ended in August 1996 and the second broke out in October1999 . At least 100,000 civilians and 10,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been killed in both wars, but human rights groups have said the real numbers could be much higher. 2003-10-08 18:30 |