| AI Index: EUR
46/053/2004 30 September 2004 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Public Statement AI Index: EUR 46/053/2004 (Public) News Service No: 241 30 September 2004 Russian Federation: Council of Europe must ensure protection of human rights in Chechnya On the eve of debates on the situation in and around Chechnya at the Council of Europe, Amnesty International is calling on the Council of Europe and its member states to use all available avenues to help protect and implement human rights in Chechnya and the surrounding republics of the North Caucasus. The Council of Europe should continue to monitor and report on the situation in Chechnya as well as on the situation of refugees and internally displaced people from Chechnya, and further cooperation between Council of Europe human rights bodies and the relevant Russian government authorities should be encouraged. When debating the three reports -- on the human rights situation in Chechnya, the political situation in Chechnya and on the humanitarian situation of Chechen internally displaced persons -- on 7 October, the Parliamentary Assembly should reiterate that human rights abuses are never justified and that impunity must end. Amnesty International calls on the Council of Europe and its member states not to miss this opportunity to further strengthen mechanisms to protect human rights in Russia and insist on the implementation of previous recommendation. Throughout the conflict Amnesty International has documented cases of "disappearance", extrajudicial execution, torture, including rape and ill-treatment by members of the security forces, and indiscriminate killings of civilians by members of armed opposition groups. While most of these abuses are committed with impunity, victims of human rights abuses who dare to seek justice by lodging a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights may face serious reprisals for doing so. Amnesty International has, for example, documented a number of cases in which applicants to the court and their relatives have been murdered, "disappeared" or were subjected to threats and physical abuse. In some cases the victims of such violations were explicitly told that they were treated like this in order to force them to withdraw their complaint. On 14 October the European Court of Human Rights will consider the first cases of human rights violations in Chechnya. As part of its documentation of continuing abuses, Amnesty International delegates travelled to Ingushetia in March/April and again in June this year, gathering information about human rights abuses both in Chechnya and in Ingushetia. In June 2004 the organization published a report on the situation in the North Caucasus, which among other things calls on the Council of Europe to increase measures of protection of human rights in the North Caucasus. (AI Index: EUR 46/027/2004) The October session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is taking place against the backdrop of the recent tragic events in Beslan, North Ossetia. Amnesty International strongly condemned the hostage taking, during which 331 hostages died and many more were injured. The organization is concerned that in the aftermath of the hostage taking human rights protection may be eroded in the name of security and the so-called "war on terror". The Duma (the Russian parliament) adopted a resolution calling for measures to combat terrorism, which may include infringements of human rights; freedom of movement and freedom of _expression. Amnesty International is further concerned about reports that large numbers of people of Caucasian and Central Asian origin have been detained in Moscow and other major cities throughout the Russian Federation and have been deported to other areas inside Russia, and that during such deportations the human rights of many of these people have been violated. While acknowledging Russia's obligation to protect its citizens from violent crimes, Amnesty International urges the authorities to ensure that any measures taken are in line with the Council of Europe Guidelines on Human Rights and the Fight against Terrorism. Reports received by Amnesty International suggest that immediately after the hostage taking Russian forces and Chechen forces under the command of the pro-Moscow government in Chechnya detained relatives of those who were suspected of being responsible for the hostage taking. Most of the detained were later released but some of them reported that they had been physically and verbally abused. Amnesty International's delegates, attending the October session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe can be contacted on: Nicola Duckworth, Director, Europe and Central Asia Programme + 44 78 1063 8897 Friederike Behr, Researcher/Campaigner on the Russian Federation, +44 78 7020 3595 AI Index: EUR 46/053/2004 30 September 2004 The Chechnya vanishing point: fate of thousands unknown September 28, 2004 AFP Chechnya's public prosecutor wears combat fatigues and says without a hint of irony that many of the thousands of people reported disappeared since the beginning of the war in 1999 were abducted by "bandits" dressed as soldiers. "Mister prosecutor, the most serious question is that of those people who have disappeared," Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, recently told Chechnya's acting prosecutor, Vladimir Chernyayev. "There are some strictly criminal cases, but many also accuse federal forces and local police, saying complaints from families are either not accepted or are never followed up," Gil-Robles said while on a mission in Grozny. The commissioner produced a letter from a woman who said her son had been arrested at a checkpoint in 2002 and had not been heard from since. "The mother filed a complaint and never got a response," Gil-Robles said. Chernyayev acknowledged in response that disappearances of people in Chechnya without any explanation was a problem, but said local pro-Russian authorities were working on it and had made at least some progress. "The problem exists," he said. "But regarding the cases you've mentioned, it is most of the time an act of bandits wearing the uniform of federal troops." The fact that real Russian troops in Chechnya often wear masks to hide their faces "is permitted by antiterrorist legislation," Chernyayev added. Of the 2,450 people reported to have disappeared without a trace since the start of the second war in Chechnya in 1999, criminal investigations have been opened into 1,749 of the cases, he explained. And progress, he said, was being made: seven cases were solved in 2000, 15 in 2003 and 10 were solved in the first eight months of this year alone. Or, Gil-Robles said, roughly 50 cases over five years. Chechnya's local pro-Russian administration said that at least 162 civilians were reported missing since the start of this year, while the Russian human rights group Memorial says 4,000 have vanished since 1999. "In autumn 2002, a resident of Urus-Martan by the name of Khadayev witnessed the abduction of his son by men in military fatigues aboard an armoured vehicle, all of whom hid their faces except for the commander," said Dokka Istlayev, a Memorial representative in western Chechnya. "Last March, the man went to the prosecutor to ask about progress in the investigation. Outside the building, he saw an officer: it was the chief of the group that kidnapped his son. "So he hurried to see the prosecutor, but the judge on the case came out, looked at the suspect in question, and told the father: I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do," because, Istlayev asserted, the suspect was a member of Russia's FSB security agency. Meanwhile a deputy to the acting Chechnya prosecutor, having disappeared to check on the case of the mother whose son had been arrested at a checkpoint and was not heard from again, emerged carrying the file on the case. An investigation "confirmed the disappearance" of the woman's son, he said. It did not however show any involvement by Russian federal troops and so the case was closed. Gil-Robles admitted that some of those reported disappeared could well be victims of criminal vendettas or abductions by rebel groups. Others might turn up again, like one disappeared Chechen who was later found as a refugee in Poland. News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International World: International treaty against "disappearances" - a light of hope for thousands AI Index: POL 30/037/2004 (Public) 1 October 2004 The international community has repeatedly condemned "disappearances". Now it’s in the hands of governments to take a stand and adopt effective preventative measures, said Martin Macpherson, Director of International Organizations at Amnesty International today on the eve of the meeting of a specially created UN working group. The UN working group -- meeting in Geneva from 4 to 8 October -- has been charged with drafting an international treaty against enforced "disappearance". " ‘Disappearances’ are more than just a 'Latin American problem'. Hundreds of thousands of people have 'disappeared' in Iraq, Sri Lanka, the former Yugoslavia and many other countries. This treaty will provide the relatives of the 'disappeared' with a concrete legal instrument in their search for truth and justice," said Mr Macpherson. "A draft text circulated in June contains many innovative features. The danger is that some of these may be watered down because of opposition by states which oppose a treaty on disappearances," said Mr Macpherson. Amongst other provisions, the draft states that: * No one shall be subjected to enforced disappearance, and that victims and their relatives have a right to the truth. * Each state party should incorporate a specific crime of enforced disappearance in its national law, to investigate complaints and reports of enforced disappearance and to bring those responsible to justice, including suspected perpetrators from other countries who are present in its territory. * States should establish preventive safeguards on arrest and in custody. The draft also provides for an urgent judicial remedy, which relatives can invoke to discover victims’ whereabouts and ensure their well-being. * States should afford compensation and other forms of reparation to the victim, and take remedial measures regarding children of the "disappeared" * People must not be forcibly returned to a country where they are at risk of "disappearing". * An international expert "monitoring body" will have the power to search for the "disappeared" in states party to the treaty, and to hear complaints from individuals alleging that their rights under the treaty have been violated. "Less than 50 years ago, people were not internationally protected from torture, but in 1984 the UN adopted an international Convention against Torture. The importance of this legal instrument in the fight against torture is now widely recognized. It is now time for governments to take concrete action against 'disappearances' by adopting a similar treaty against this egregious form of human rights violations," said Mr Macpherson. Background Information After more than two decades of campaigning by relatives and human rights organizations, the UN Commission on Human Rights decided in 2001 to set up a working group of state representatives "to elaborate a draft legally binding normative instrument for the protection of all persons from enforced "disappearance". The working group held its first session in January 2003. All AI documents on "disappearances": http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maacHTFabasnsbeuxZvb/ September 30th 2004 · Prague Watchdog European Court of Human Rights to hear Chechen cases Ruslan Isayev, North Caucasus – On October 14 the European Court of Human Rights, for the first time, will hear six complaints lodged by citizens of the Chechen Republic against the Russian Federation, announced the Nazran office of the human rights centre Memorial. The six complaints had been merged into three cases and the applicants accuse the Russian military of killing their relatives, destroying their property and causing undue emotional suffering. According to Memorial, the best-known case is Magomed Khashiyev, whose brother, sister and two other relatives were killed by Russian soldiers in Grozny in 2000. Although criminal investigations had been started, they were repeatedly suspended and reopened with no conclusion ever being reached. The human rights defenders feel that the very fact that these cases will now be tried by the Strasbourg-based court is a small victory in their efforts that have lasted nearly five years. In the event the court will rule in favor of the applicants, which almost no one doubts, it is almost certain that the number of complaints submitted by Chechens will sharply increase. RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 8, No. 186, Part I, 30 September 2004 Slain journalist's family offers cautious reaction. Paul Klebnikov's brother, Mikhail, told "Komsomolskaya pravda" in a telephone interview on 28 September that the family welcomes the work of investigators if the men arrested in Moscow were indeed involved in the killing. "But we in America consider a man innocent until his guilt is thoroughly proven," the paper quoted Mikhail Klebnikov as saying. "In our case, we would like to see the evidence." He added that the family wants to be sure that those who presumably ordered the killing are arrested, not merely those who carried it out. Prominent "Novaya gazeta" columnist Yulia Latynina meanwhile repeated recent speculation that former Chechen field commander Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev might have been involved in the killing, AP reported on 28 September, noting Klebnikov's book on Nukhaev. ''Klebnikov fell victim to a cultural divide,'' she commented. VY Sep.30. 2004 Activist Faces Jail for Helping 2 Conscripts The Associated Press A Soldiers' Mothers Committee activist is facing up to seven years in prison for helping two conscripts get decommissioned from the Army, in what her lawyers said Thursday was a case of military retaliation against one of the country's best-known rights organizations. Military prosecutors in the city of Vladimir, about 160 kilometers east of Moscow, charged Lyudmila Yarilina, chairwoman of the regional Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, with complicity in evading military service. Prosecutors accused Yarilina of convincing doctors to simulate or artificially inflict illnesses on two conscripts to help them get out of the Army. Court hearings are to start in early October, and Yarilina faces three to seven years in prison if convicted. Yarilina argued that she merely helped two servicemen -- Dmitry Yepifanov and Roman Kryukov -- be examined by doctors in 2001 while they were on home leave. The doctors' diagnoses of intestinal diseases were later confirmed in a specialized military hospital and the conscripts were decommissioned. "What is she guilty of? Sending a person to a doctor?" said Yarilina's lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Markelov said the fact that such a "literally made-up case" reached the courts threatens the work of Soldiers' Mothers Committees across the country. The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com from the October 01, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1001/p04s01-woeu.html Ethnic Chechens face revenge attacks in Moscow Venturing into the street is perilous for the Chechen minority here after a recent terror wave. By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor MOSCOW - Watching the carnage of the Beslan tragedy unfold on television, Arsen Zolaev - along with countless other Russians - wept for the child victims. But the ethnic Chechen, for years a resident of Moscow, also knew to expect an ugly backlash against his community, aimed at any dark-skinned person from the Caucasus. For some families living on edge, those fears have already been realized with violence. "Look at my face - you will see what has changed," says Mr. Zolaev, pointing gingerly toward his broken nose, after an apparent revenge attack at the hands of an off-duty policeman outside a nightclub, which left him unconscious and hospitalized for three days. When a friend ran to help, he says, the officer taunted him and shouted: "I have always been against you [Chechens], and always will be!" The 100,000 or so ethnic Chechens in the Russian capital are used to hunkering down after any high-profile attack - whether or not committed by Chechen separatists fighting Russian federal forces for independence - knowing that latent xenophobia in such periods lurks especially close to the surface. Tensions now are especially high, and yielding for Chechens here a far more virulent version of the suspicion faced by Muslims in America, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Moscow mayor Yuri Luzkhov now wants a new city ordinance to ban all Chechen visitors and people from places where "counter-terrorism" operations are under way. City police rounded up 11,000 people - many of them Caucasians and Central Asians - in two days of raids two weeks ago, on suspicion of not registering with authorities. A gang of up to 50 young people on the Moscow subway assaulted four people from the Caucasian Republic of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya, pummeling them and slashing with knives as they screamed: "This is what you get for terrorist attacks!" Fallout from terror wave The Beslan tragedy marked the culmination of a two-week terror wave that included a Moscow suicide bomb and two downed airliners, causing a total death toll of about 450. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility. "When such things happen, it's dangerous even to go out in the street; you don't know what you will be charged with," says Arslan Zolaev, Arsen's brother, who runs a Moscow trade company. "Every [Chechen] feels the change - there is no sense of personal security." "This hatred is artificially imposed on simple people," says Arslan. "Educated Russians understand that nationalism means nothing. But youth and others see TV, and conclude that everything bad that's happening is blamed on a certain nationality. For 10 years, Chechens have been blamed for everything." Arsen, a freelance photographer, says that Russian neighbors who know the family are "quite sympathetic," make visits, and have taken his pregnant wife to the hospital in their car. Some police, too, who have worked in Chechnya have been kind - or at least not hostile. But every Chechen family in Moscow can tell stories of harassment, which seem as common as tales of brutality meted out by federal forces in Chechnya during two wars in the past decade. Casualty counts vary. For the first war alone, from 1994 to 1996, expert counts range from 20,000 to 80,000. The total death toll among Russian forces, in both wars, is "close to" 20,000, according to an estimate published last week by defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. Chechens and other minority Muslim groups of the Caucasus - targeted for centuries in their troubled southern border regions by Imperial Czarist, Soviet, and now Russian armies bent on imposing central control - have never been far from the crosshairs. But the Chechen conflict has been widely felt in Moscow only in the last few years. A group of 41 heavily armed Chechens seized control of Moscow's Dubrovka Theater and 800 hostages in October 2002. A string of Chechen women suicide bombers - known as "black widows," because their menfolk have died in the war or disappeared, whom security services commonly refer to by the Muslim name "Fatima" - have also struck the capital. After bombs tore apart a Moscow subway train last February, killing 39, Arsen's sister Marina was hassled by a policeman on the street. "He shouted: 'Is your name Fatima? Where is your shahid's [Islamic martyr's explosive] belt?' " Marina recalls, drawing her hand through the long black curly hair that she says tipped the officer off to her Chechen roots. "I said: 'I'm not Fatima,' but he replied: 'You're all Fatimas!" Marina, who was studying law at the time, says the policeman swore at her when he spoke, to test her reaction, and told her that police had orders "to take every Chechen to the station." "Women face more difficulties than men today. When I go out, it seems everyone is looking at me," Marina says. "They always suspect me of something bad. I do everything not to go out with a bag. It is so humiliating, because if there is any problem, my word will be worth nothing." "We really feel unprotected," Marina adds. "We want the terror attacks to stop. We also go on the subway and the streets, like normal Muscovites. But we also fear the steps of authorities that will follow." Once, police tore up Arsen's difficult-to-acquire Moscow residency documents. And social prominence is no guarantee. Magomed Tolboyev, a winner of the "Hero of Russia" nationalism award and native of Dagestan who is a retired Air Force colonel and cosmonaut, was roughed up during a "routine" passport check just days after Beslan. Police officials at first ruled that officers had used force "within the limits permissible" while "dealing" with Mr. Tolboyev, and that they would not be disciplined. A week later, the Moscow police chief apologized. 'Making terrorists of us' Such incidents rarely end so tidily. Two years ago on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday, Arsen and his wife Kameta, a journalist, who was pregnant at the time, were attacked by a handful of skinheads as they walked home, carrying shopping bags. They moved from the neighborhood almost immediately; Kameta attributes a miscarriage to the attack. Today the young family is proud of their first child, 13-month-old Magomed; another is on the way. "He is condemned as a terrorist from the day he was born - because he is Chechen," Kameta says of her son. During the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s, she spent a month in the basement of her apartment building, as the capital, Grozny, was reduced to rubble from constant Russian shelling. "We can't live in Chechnya, and it's very difficult to live here - we're in a blind alley," says Arsen. He says family that remain beg him not to return to Grozny, and tells of the harrowing fate of three cousins taken from their home and tortured one night, two years ago. A man witnessed a Russian armored vehicle drop one cousin in a garbage dump. "He was in very bad condition. His ears were burned because they used electricity. They broke his fingers with a hammer," says Arsen. "He's alive, but mentally broken." The two others were found elsewhere, dead. "It's just liquidation of a nation - we're being exterminated," says Arsen. "Russia, where we live, is making terrorists of us. Our children, our brothers, live in basements, illiterate and sick with tuberculosis. We are becoming a nation of invalids." "This [case] is just a drop in the sea," says Kameta. "It happens everyday. What happened in Beslan in three days has been happening in Chechnya for 3650 days [10 years]." "I'm sure that Beslan's children are worth all the sympathy and love," says Kameta. "But if one-tenth of that love had been shown toward us, all Chechens would burst into tears of rejoicing. We have been killed, our houses have been destroyed, and at the same time we are called terrorists." "Most young people are doomed to become rebels," says Kameta, who holds two higher education degrees. "They have no other way out. They are never left alone. They might get killed in their own home." Arsen cried during TV coverage of Beslan, and even considered giving blood for the victims. But he reconsidered when he realized it would raise questions. Two months ago, the couple went back to Grozny for the first time in years, for the funeral of Kameta's father. Arsen still has pictures of pulverized Grozny on his mobile phone. "When I saw it with my own eyes, it looked like a graveyard," Arsen says. "People have changed. They are not moved by anything anymore, not even their own grief. They look lifeless, cold, their eyes glazed over..." "At the same time, there is an optimism as they try to rebuild," adds Arsen, before Kameta stops him short. "That is not optimism!" she admonishes. "They barely survive. After the first war, there was some optimism. But after 10 years, nothing is left of this optimism. I've got a chance to live [in Moscow], you've got a chance to live. But people there?" Arsen hands Kameta a diaper for Magomed, and they tell about a moment of pity they felt in Chechnya, where Russians are now part of a widely despised minority - as they themselves are in Moscow. An elderly Russian man sat alone in a market, outcast by local Chechens, trying to sell an unappetizing pile of apples. "Everyone ignored him. He didn't feel comfortable - if he stayed [in Grozny], it meant he couldn't leave," says Arsen. "We didn't want them, but we bought all his apples. We understood him." Beslan Aftermath…Muslim Women Live in Fear By Damir Ahmed, IOL Correspondent MOSCOW, September 30 (IslamOnline.net) - Most Russian Muslims have prevented their women from leaving alone due to escalation of racial assaults in the wake of the Beslan crisis, a leading Russian newspaper has reported. Izvestia said in a report, published Wednesday, September 29, the 20 million Muslim community living in different towns fear female members could be soft targets in ugly incidents of hostility sparked after the seizure and hostage taking in Beslan, blamed on Chechen fighters. Russia’s Council of Muftis, however, declined to set a number of racial incidents against Muslims since the deadly attacks in Beslan. “Most Muslims fear reporting attacks carried out against them for fear of reprisal from extremist Russian groups,” a source in the council told IslamOnline.net Wednesday. Several dozen skinheads rampaged through a metro carriage, stabbing passengers they believed were Muslims from southern regions and shouting “This one is for the terrorist act!”. Three people from ex-Soviet Tajikistan and Azerbaijan were hurt in the incident. Attacks Tens of Russians have, during the current month, attacked several Muslim young women in public places, underground stations and public squares, taking off their veils and pouring them with insults, the Russian newspaper reported. The paper cited other examples of the cases, including an attempt by a number of Russian nationalists to attack a Muslim mother of six children in eastern Moscow; yet, policemen managed to save her life. The newspaper disclosed another incident, that had never been published before, where unknown people hung posters on the walls of a mosque in western Moscow reading: “Islam Is a Religion for Non-Humans”. Further, the paper said, Russian federal police have received instructions from the Interior Ministry to stop any hijab-clad woman to check her identity on claims of being a suspected “terrorist”. Russians objecting to the presence of fellow passengers in Muslim dress have delayed four flights in the past month, with airport officials conducting additional checks on “suspect” passengers or moving them to other flights. On September16 , a Muslim woman was found in a remote area in the eastern city of Asbest raped and tortured to death, Russia ’s NTV network reported citing Russian police sources. The 45 -year-old mother of three was hit on the head by an iron device by unknown attackers, who wrote "Death to terrorists" on the back of her naked body. Unknown people have also accosted and battered a mosque imam in the city of Sterlitamak in Bashkiria Republic. The imam is now in a critical condition due to severe head injuries. Tolerance Appeal This came as President Vladimir Putin made an appeal for Russians not to give in to hatred of ethnic and religious minorities that he said extremists were trying to foment. Addressing religious leaders Wednesday, Putin said Russians had to ensure that the battle to crush extremism bred no hatred in a country with more than 100 ethnic groups. Putin's appeal for tolerance reflected growing unease at brutality and mistrust often directed at dark-complexioned people from the Caucasus or ex-Soviet states to the south or in Central Asia, according to Reuters. Russian Muslims reacted with fury after the Beslan attack, where More than 322 people, including 155 children , were killed when the Russian special forces stormed a school in northern Ossetia to release 1000 children and parents taken hostage by militants in northern Ossetia. The attack was reportedly claimed by Chechen fighter Shamil Basayev though veteran leader Aslan Maskhdov had condemned the attack and vigorously distanced himself from. But more than 40,000 Muslims took to the streets in huge demonstrations in 20 major cities on September 7 to denounce the bloodbath. Also, Islamic figures and agencies in Russia and abroad have condemned the operation. |