News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International

United Nations: Proposed Anti-Terrorism resolution undermines human rights

AI Index: IOR 40/022/2004 (Public) News Service No: 250 8 October 2004

Amnesty International today made an urgent appeal to members of the UN Security Council to revise an anti-terrorism resolution which would seriously undermine human rights including the right to freedom of expression and religion.

Council members are under strong pressure from the Russian Federation to adopt the resolution today despite the use of language so broad and vague that peaceful political or human rights activists can easily be detained, prosecuted or extradited under its binding provisions.

The organization is particularly concerned that the resolution calls on states to bring to justice or extradite any person who "supports", "facilitates" or who even "attempts to participate in the ... planning [or] preparation of ... terrorist attacks". This language casts the net so wide that people, including human rights advocates or peaceful political activists can easily and unintentionally fall victim to the measures advocated in the resolution.

The resolution does not even require that acts contributing to "terrorists acts", such as unknowingly providing lodging, have to be intentional or done with the knowledge that they will assist the crime. In resorting to such exceptionally broad language, the resolution would call for measures which do not even permit individuals to foresee whether their acts will be lawful or not, a basic requirement in criminal law," Amnesty International said.

The organization condemns all attacks targeting civilians, including yesterday’s deplorable bombings in Egypt. States have obligations to take measures to protect persons within their jurisdiction and bring to justice those responsible for such attacks. Measures taken must respect and protect the human rights of all concerned however.

While the present draft resolution is an improvement on previous drafts and includes some weak human rights provisions, it only tells states that they "should" act in accordance with their obligations under international law, including human rights law, instead of making it absolutely clear that they must do so.

Amnesty International calls on the Security Council to:

    * Include an operative paragraph in the resolution which specifies
that all measures taken by states must be consistent with international law, in particular international human rights, refugee law and humanitarian law. The UN Charter requires no less;
    * Clarify that no measures may violate in any way the absolute
prohibition on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and that international cooperation in bringing suspects to justice must not include any loosening of the safeguards against torture and ill-treatment, including the rule of non-refoulement;
    * Define crimes only in a clear, narrow sense that are clearly
understood and would prevent abuse;
    * Ensure that the call for "penalties consistent with their grave
nature" does not constitute a call on states to impose capital punishment, which is a violation of the right to life.


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Kavkaz-Center

Mass grave uncovered in Chechnya

A mass grave containing six unidentified bodies has been discovered in the Chechen capital Jokhar, during excavation work at a building site Russia's NTV television said. The agency said on Saturday that the six had apparently been shot and buried about three months ago, AFP reported.

The Interior Ministry in the Russian province was not immediately available for comment.

Numerous non-governmental organisations have reported on the abundance of mass graves in the region, to the extent that the Committee on Conscience of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2000 placed Chechnya on its Genocide Watch List.

Other rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) have criticized the Russian government for covering up many cases of torture and mass graves where suspects were murdered then hurriedly buried, without conducting thorough investigations.

The government's report regarding the treatment of mass graves was deemed as "highly inadequate" on more than occasion by the HRW.

HRW has in the past also strongly criticized the international community for being silent and not pressurizing Russia to deal with the Chechens in a humane manner.

It says this has given the Russians a green light to continue its human rights violations against Chechens.

Russian rights group, Memorial, which won the UN refugee award for its assistance of Chechen refugees, has in the past said it knew of other mass graves but was weary of making the information public.

They feared the sites would meet the same fate as a mass grave in the Oktyabrsky district near a police station manned by federal Interior Ministry troops.

"They blew the building up the same day information leaked to the public," said Lipkhan Bazayeva of Memorial's office in Nazran, Ingushetia, citing reports from visitors to her office from Chechnya in April 2001.

"Having started to talk about it too early, we made a mistake — the Russians managed to hide the evidence."

Agencies

2004-10-10



Monday, October 11, 2004. Page 3. The MOscow Times

FSB Confiscates Reporter's Passport

By Carl Schreck Staff Writer A reporter who covered Chechnya for The Associated Press and Radio Liberty for several years was unable to cover its presidential election after the Federal Security Service confiscated his passport four days before the Aug. 29 vote.

Yuri Bagrov was notified Tuesday that he faces charges of forging a court document to obtain a Russian passport.

Bagrov said Friday that officers from the FSB's branch in North Ossetia came to his apartment on Aug. 25 with a warrant authorizing them to search for illegal documents, guns and illegal drugs.

"They went through everything," Bagrov said by telephone from the North Ossetian capital, Vladikavkaz. "They even searched through my dirty laundry. They ended up confiscating lots of things, including all of my articles, my dictaphone, video and audio cassettes, home computer, birth certificate and university diploma. They even took my wife's personal diary."

He said the FSB officers also took his passport, which left him unable to report about the election and the hostage-taking in nearby Beslan in early September.

"I've just been stuck at home," Bagrov said. "I can't go anywhere."

His lawyer, Alexander Dzilikhov, said the prosecutor's office of North Ossetia's Iristonsky district has opened a criminal case based on a March 2003 court decision granting Russian citizenship to Bagrov. "They are claiming that the document with the court decision is a forgery," Dzilikhov said.


Bagrov moved to Vladikavkaz from his native Tbilisi, Georgia, with a Soviet passport in 1992.

Dzilikhov said Bagrov had no reason to forge the document as he met several criteria to receive citizenship, including a Russian mother and wife, an apartment, and a Russian higher education.

The Iristonsky prosecutor's office could not be reached for comment Friday, and a spokesman for the North Ossetian prosecutor's office said he had no information regarding the case.

Dzilikhov said investigators violated Bagrov's right to be immediately notified about the case. "We received the notification on Oct. 5, and it said the case was opened Sept. 17," he said.

Bagrov said he resigned from the AP earlier in the week but did not elaborate. He had worked as an AP stringer for five years. The AP bureau in Moscow declined to comment.

Bagrov remains a stringer for U.S. government-funded Radio Liberty.

Maria Klein, head of Radio Liberty's Russian news service, did not return repeated calls for comment Friday, but she was quoted by Kommersant on Friday as saying that a number of the station's reporters across the country have been facing pressure to resign.

As for Bagrov, she said: "We don't want to stir up problems with the court decision. We're hoping that the reporter eventually gets his documents back."

Soria Blatmann, of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, said Friday that the organization has not yet spoken with Bagrov but that the passport confiscation was a "strange measure."

"Anytime a government takes a passport away from a journalist, it's a bad sign for democracy," Blatmann said.

Reporters Without Borders has strongly criticized the authorities over two other recent incidents in which journalists known for their critical coverage about Chechnya failed to reach Beslan to report about the hostage crisis.

On Sept. 2, Radio Liberty journalist Andrei Babitsky was detained at Vnukovo Airport by police who said they suspected he had explosives in his bags. After no explosives were found, Babitsky was released, but two men then approached him and started provoking him. All three men were detained, and Babitsky was charged with hooliganism and sentenced to five days in jail.

Also Sept. 2, Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya fell ill as she traveled to Beslan and had to be hospitalized. She said she was poisoned.