| eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 9/7/2004 Human rights advocates indicate mass refugee departure from Ingushetia A dramatic outbreak of anti-refugee and anti-Chechen sentiments which is to be seen in the republic after the June 22 events has led to a mass departure of internally displaced people from Ingushetia to Chechnya. In the opinion of representatives of Chechen nongovernmental organizations handling problems of internally displaced people, over 2,500 citizens of Chechnya have left Ingushetia over the past three weeks. Most of the "returnees" are former dwellers of compact refugee communities in the republic, according to the human rights advocates. "It is quite natural that migration officials that have been trying in vain to have tens of thousands of refugees from Chechnya back to their homeland in the last few years are now making use of the situation that took shape after the recent events in Ingushetia to escalate fear and panic among the internally displaced people. This was the reason for cutting the electricity and gas supply beginning from June 23 in many temporary accommodation points where refugees live," believes Taisa Isaeva, head of the press center for the Council of Nongovernmental Organizations of the Chechen Republic. "No doubt, systematic 'special operations' and 'clean-ups' conducted by law enforcement and security agencies in compact refugee communities play not the least role in accelerating the process of refugees' return to Chechnya." As is known, the temporary accommodation point for refugees from Chechnya quartered on the premises of a dairy farm in the Altievo municipal district of Nazran where more than 1,000 people had lived was shut down recently. The compact refugee community on a dairy farm in Nasyr-Kort is next in line to be eliminated, according to analysts. An average of thirty to forty families (one hundred to one hundred and fifty people on average) leave the republic every day, according to some officials of Ingushetia's Migration Service. Author: Malika Suleymanova, CK correspondent http://www.ingushetiya.ru/news/3853.html (my quick tr) An answer has arrived from the prosecutorship on the Peoples Assembly deputy Musa Ozdoyev's inquiry. FSB abducts people Ingushetiya ru 10.07.2004 13:14 Our website reported, that on 15 June in the Cossack village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya was kidnapped and driven away by unknown persons inhabitant of Karabulak Adam Kazbekovich Medov, born in 1980. [re; http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chechnya-sl/message/38462] This kidnapping would remain the same mystery as tens of other crimes of analogous nature, perpetration of which, our authorities being informed that they are committed by the special services, have crossed over all limits of cynicism and "suspected" the fighters. But for the special services this what had happened was unexpected. On the 17th of June at the Volga-20 checkpoint of GIBDD [THE STATE INSPECTORATE FOR ROAD TRAFFIC SAFETY] MVD RI a few automobiles with GRU and FSB of the Chechen republic agents were halted, they were heading for Chechnya. Adam Medov jumped out during checking of documents from a trunk of one of those automobiles, with his hands tied and he began to scream for help. In the same trunk one more hostage was laying - Aslan Kushnashvili, also kidnapped in the republic several days ago. Employees of GAI [Traffic Control] of Ingushetia did not allow to take away those abductees, they called for back-up and sent them with a special unit. Medov and Kushnashvili were delivered into the building Sunzha ROVD in Sleptsovskaya. Being located there, Medov had time to tell, that he was kidnapped by the agents of Ingushetia's FSB , that they held him in the FSB's basement, torturing, demanding from him to take the blame for the [assassination] attempt on President Murat Zyazikov. Medov and Kushnashvili from the building of Sunzha ROVD have been taken away by the agents of Ingushetia's FSB, who again transferred them to their their collegues from Chechnya. From this moment on, nothing is known about the fate of those abductees. Medov's father turned himself for help to deputy of the People's Assembly of Ingushetii - Musa Ozdoyev. The latter one directed his deputy's inquiry to the prosecutor of Ingushetia. His inquiry has recently been answered by the acting prosecutor of Ingushetia - Galayev: [Official letter from the Ingushetia's prosecutorship] In connection with your inquiry and O.K Medov's affidavit about this unjustified detention of his brother A.K Medov, it's been established that A.K Medov was detained on 15.06.2004 by agents of UFSB RF of the Chechen republic. In regards to this, your inquiry and O.K Medov's affidavit have been directed for examination to a military prosecutor of the United Group of Troops (forces) in the North Caucasus. U.B. Galayev The acting prosecutor of the republic July 10, 2004, 11:43PM Journalists find their lives at risk in Russia American latest media professional killed in nation By MARK MCDONALD Knight Ridder Tribune News MOSCOW - The drive-by murder of American journalist Paul Klebnikov in Moscow was the latest in a series of attacks on reporters and editors working in Russia. "Russia is consistently one of the world's most dangerous places to be a journalist," said Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, noting that 14 journalists in Russia have been killed here in the last four years. None of the killers has been prosecuted, and Cooper said "this shameful record of impunity" and "the Kremlin's indifference to press freedom" have created a murderous and dangerous climate for journalists. The group Reporters Without Borders also has described Russia as "one of the world's deadliest countries for journalists." Klebnikov, 41, editor of the newly launched Russian edition of Forbes magazine, was killed by two gunmen as he left his office late Friday night. He was the first U.S. journalist to be killed in Russia. Journalists from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have been assaulted in recent months, and last week marked the one-year anniversary of the poisoning death of crusading journalist Yuri Shchekochikin. A former member of the Russian parliament, he had written about the possible involvement of Russian security agencies in a series of apartment bombings in Moscow in 1999, explosions that the government has blamed on Chechen terrorists. Journalists and "fixers" — local assistants who help foreign reporters — are regularly shadowed, harassed and threatened in the Russian republic of Chechnya. Ali Astamirov, for example, a Chechen journalist working for the French news agency Agence France-Presse, was abducted last July and has not been heard from since. Two investigative newspaper journalists, Alexei Sidrov and Valery Ivanov, were killed last year in the Russian automaking center of Togliatti. Both men were investigating corruption in the car industry, and a senior Russian official called Sidrov's stabbing death "a deliberate act of terror." "If a reporter in Russia investigates a case of corruption or illegal privatization, he's risking his life," said Freimut Duve, former media envoy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "In terms of the numbers of journalists murdered, Russia is second only to Colombia." Although a colleague said Klebnikov had not been working on anything controversial of late, he had written extensively about Russia's super-rich oligarchs, the small group of men who used devious and often ruthless methods to gain large fortunes after the breakup of the Soviet Union. He wrote an exposé in Forbes of one of those oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky, an aide to former President Boris Yeltsin, alleging the tycoon was involved in murder, extortion and high-level corruption. Berezovsky sued the magazine, although the suit was eventually settled and withdrawn. Klebnikov followed his magazine story with a book, Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. Berezovsky, a billionaire, is wanted by the Russian government and now lives in self-exile in London. Klebnikov also wrote a book last year titled Conversation With a Barbarian, about a former Chechen activist who had been involved in financing separatism in Chechnya. Klebnikov told Knight Ridder at the time that he was concerned about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Chechnya, particularly Wahabbism, and the growing use of female suicide bombers in Russia's major cities. The Chechen Times 11.07.2004 To Committee on Conscience of Holocaust Memorial Museum Dear members of the Committee on Conscience of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, We are inspired by your constant attention to the sad fate of the Chechen people and from the bottom of the heart we thank you for support and in particular for this forum. Attention to the fate of a small nation, — killed and tormented by Russian “force” structures unimpeded, — from the side of such respected organization as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum gives us hope that atrocities on the Chechen land will ultimately end and the Chechen people will achieve peace and freedom, and war criminals will get what they deserve. Your activity in support of the Chechen people seems especially important in today’s international situation, when the struggle against international terrorism in its present form, without clear definitions and tasks, more and more erodes existing international laws and gives wide possibilities to demagogues to use this struggle in their own interests. Russia’s leadership has used the struggle against terrorism provocatively declaring the Chechen people and in particular – its forces of Resistance in the person of the last democratically elected President Aslan Maskhadov – to have links to “terrorism.” With a deep pain and anxiety we have watched how deliberately created by the Russian authorities impasse in the Russian-Chechen conflict; bare-faced, repeatedly demonstrated signs of full neglect to aspirations and rights of the Chechen people and appeals of the legitimate Chechen leadership for talks stimulate the Chechen Resistance. Continuing «cleaning up operations” against the civilian Chechen population, bombardment and shellings of towns and villages of Chechnya, tortures turning healthy and able-bodied people into cripples and beggars, rapes, constant pressure on refugees, denial to the entire people of basic rights to live, work, safety even as Russian citizens, including the right to fair labor, — all that drives the Chechen people into the situation close to what prisoners of the Warsaw ghetto faced: Chechens, almost as the Jews in the ghetto, are left nothing except resistance and almost probable death in an unequal fight against the thousandfold outnumbering enemy. If no alternative (legal, political) way to stop the monstrous tormenting of the whole Chechen people is found, such situation can eventually lead to a radical Chechen resistance, to acts of revenge even beyond the territory of Chechnya. True culprits of the genocidal war will call such acts as “terrorism,” deliberately avoiding this term regarding their own actions which force Chechens to such actions, and the circle will lock gripping both sides in mutual extermination. Put any nation in a similar situation and the result will be the same. From the other side, the Chechen war serves to “justify” and cover up a more decisive turn of the Russian authorities to the policy and methods of ruling the country adopted from the Soviet past: to strengthening of political repressions, extermination of last “oases” of freedom of speech, democratic forces and human rights movement – the main achievements since the Gorbachev reforms. We witness the revival of a police state with imperial ideology, aggressive foreign and false-cynical home policy, the bulk of which is aimed at – at any cost, even at the cost of genuine Russia’s interests! – achieving justification and diplomatic support of the extermination of the Chechen people, as well as ignoring own crimes of Russian authorities and force structures before fellow citizens. We have come to the conclusion: there is only one way out from the Chechen-Russian impasse – a legal one. By means of talks between the conflicting sides under the conditions of international guarantees to the Chechen people against the genocide. The actions of the Russian state against the Chechen people, from provoking the war to waging it, match the classical definition of an international crime – genocide. We hope that the Committee on Conscience consider what is going on and will move the Chechen people from the “genocide watch” category to the “genocide alert” category. We hope that the Committee on Conscience will address to authorities of the USA and other leading nations with an appeal to interfere, at least after 10 years, in the on-going genocide of the Chechen people. Because who if not those who survived Holocaust and their descendants shall know to what criminal silence, reservations and stipulations can lead, when it comes to international crimes against humanity? With deep respect — International Assembly for Peace in Chechnya July 10, 2004 International Assembly for Peace in Chechnya 20 Neptune Avenue, Suite # 1 Winthrop, MA 02152 Tel/Fax: 617 846 14 98 (Translated from Russian) IAPC |