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Volume 5 Issue 19 (May 12, 2004) Rights group reports on kidnappings From the beginning of the year 2004 until the end of April, some 136 people were kidnapped in Chechnya, Dmitry Grushkin of the human rights center Memorial told Radio Liberty in a broadcast interview last week. Of these, seventy-six were eventually released while thirteen were found dead. Thus the fate of another forty-seven is still unknown. In the past Memorial representatives have stressed that they are unable to monitor the entire territory of Chechnya, and that the total number of kidnappings and deaths is therefore undoubtedly larger than the number known to them. Asked by Radio Liberty whether the overall situation in Chechnya has changed, Grushkin answered that it has neither improved nor worsened. Grushkin also noted that the practice torture is continuing. He noted an "interesting" tendency. On April 29, as often happens, masked gunmen burst into the home of the Magomadov family in the village of Kurchaloy in eastern Chechnya. The gunmen seized 16-year-old Khizir Magomadov and began to beat him, asking him to reveal the whereabouts of a relative who has been living for more than a decade in central Russia. A member of the Kadyrov administration's private army accidentally saw what was happening and radioed some of his colleagues, who quickly arrived and disarmed the masked gunmen. The latter turned out be servicemen of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Kremlin in pressure human rights advocates Now that the Putin administration has largely neutralized opposition in the parliament and the broadcast news media, the next logical step is to cripple - or at least discredit - Russia's most independent- minded human rights organizations. That would seem to be the reasoning behind a new propaganda offensive launched by Valery Kraev, a Ministry of Justice official, that has involved accusing prominent human rights advocates such as Lev Ponomarev of being financed by organized crime figures. According to a May 7 article in Gazeta.ru, Ponomarev categorically denied the accusations and threatened to file a libel suit. "My budget is transparent," said the physicist-turned-activist. "The movement For Human Rights is financed by international donors. This year they are the MacArthur Foundation in America and also the National Endowment for Democracy. The TACIS Foundation in Europe gives us technical assistance." Chechnya weekly Volume 5 Issue 19 (May 12, 2004) Statement by Chechen National Salvation Committee Valery Kraev, first deputy chief of the main penal authority at the Russian Justice Ministry, said on Friday, May 7, that the Justice Ministry had information that human rights organizations provide funding for gangs. The Russian Nationwide Movement for Human Rights headed by Lev Ponomariov is one of such organizations, in his view. The Chechen National Salvation Committee regional public movement believes this statement is intended to slander various Russian human rights organizations that directly handle protection of civil rights from abuse of law on the part of government and law enforcement agencies, and to disorder the well-organized operation of human rights organizations. The situation is confusing even because Valery Kraev who represents the Russian Justice Ministry makes such incautious and absurd statements whereby he discredits the Russian state system as a whole. Making such statements, Kraev ought to have submitted at once the Justice Ministry's evidence proving that. Since this did not happen, we consider Valery Kraev's accusations sheer slander as it is in a public statement, defaming all human rights organizations. Kraev must confirm through the media that the information he disseminated with regard to the Russian Nationwide Movement for Human Rights is unproven. Ruslan Badalov, Chairman, Chechen National Salvation Committee May 8, 2004 Nazran, Ingushetia Source: Public organization "Chechen National Rescue Committee"
Lyudmila Alekseyeva: state of servicemen injured in Chechnya 'is tragic' Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, has called the state of former Russian servicemen who became disabled in Chechnya tragic. "This question was repeatedly brought up at the sessions of the presidential human rights commission and during the meetings of commission members with the head of state," she said to Ekho Moskvy Radio. According to her, producer Sergey Govorukhin said many times that the state was not able even to provide disabled soldiers with prosthetic appliances. "When members of the commission first met with the president on 10 December 2002, Govorukhin gave exact figures how many people had not been provided with prosthetic appliances yet and how many means were needed to do it. The president said it must be done and he would control it," Ms Alekseyeva said. "I learnt from reports Govorukhin made to the commission a year or a year and a half later that it had never been done." During the second meeting with the president on 10 December 2003, Ida Kuklina, a leader of the Union of Committees of Soldier's Mothers, told about disgracefully small pensions for disabled solders, the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group added. "But there have been no considerable changes. This is a very serious problem," she said. Source: Ekho Moskvy Radio
Svetlana Gannushkina convinced any Chechen can be given refugee status rightfully Below is the full text of a statement by Svetlana Gannushkina, chair of the Civic Assistance committee for refugees, head of the Migration and Law Network of the Memorial Human Rights Center and a member of the Commission on Human Rights for the Russian President: I was deeply resentful to learn that my name and the name of the organizations I am with are used to confirm the possibility to deport Chechnya residents applying for asylum in other countries to Russia. I am convinced that any Chechen person arriving from Russia can be given a refugee status rightfully in accordance with the definition in the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (with the only exception of the Akkii Chechens living in Dagestan and making up a special group). Since 1994, I have collected vast evidence proving the right of Chechnya residents to asylum, and, after documenting them, forwarded to various nations' migration authorities and NGOs or handed to people looking for asylum. This is a part of my daily work which seems very important to me because it can deliver people from severe sufferings and real threat of death. Every year we make up reports on the condition of Chechnya residents inside and outside the republic. Such a report is being prepared this year, too. There are no reasons to maintain that the situation has changed and Chechnya residents restored to Russia are guaranteed safety. The bombing of Rigakhoi on April 8 killing the Dadaev family - the mother and her five small children - proves this as obviously as possible. This is not an only case: we have registered in 2004 dozens of detainees disappearing, their dead bodies with traces of torture occasionally uncovered by local residents. Unwilling to undertake responsibility for what is going on in Chechnya, competent agencies in some western countries distort information they receive from Memorial, and from me in particular. In response to some inquiries, I answered I did not know a case when a Chechen person was persecuted exactly for having been to a foreign state, asking for asylum and deported to Russia. (However, I never said there were no such cases.) This does not mean that, coming back, a Chechnya resident will be able to find a place where they will be registered and where they will be able to live in peace, because there is no such place for Chechens in Russia. Our reports give detailed accounts of this, and another one will be given this year. To be registered in the Russian regions, one has to have a place where the masters will give their consent to this. However, police "warns against" or just threatens masters. Therefore, there are almost no such people. Only close relatives and friends are ready to receive Chechens, but their apartments have long been overcrowded. There are places where Chechnya residents are persecuted to a smaller extent (Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod) and where it is simply impossible to live (Krasnodar territory, for example). There are serious troubles everywhere, though. Besides, the practice of tough special operations, abductions and illegal detentions of people has spread to Ingushetia in 2003, the only region that had received Chechens. It should be taken into account that getting to Europe is extremely difficult and obtaining a visa is expensive and impossible without a bribe (even our worker Lydia Yusupova, a Martin Ennals Award winner, had big trouble with getting out to Europe). Therefore, deported Chechens do not have a farthing in their pockets when they are back in Russia again. Of course, the Memorial Human Rights Center does not consider deportation acceptable. We are doing what we can to make western officials hear us. Yet they hear what they want to. Our information is called statistically inadequate, while we are accused of not mentioning thousands remaining alive when we speak about hundreds dying. However, even statistics show that the number of civilians dying in Chechnya is similar to the number of Soviet people dying during Stalin's big terror. All this can be found on Memorial's website at www.memo.ru. Western authorities' attitude makes some refugees invent stories about arrests and torture that deported people experienced after deportation. People lie in the hope to come back and obtain asylum, because the terrible truth seems insufficiently convincing. Occasionally, western NGOs support this version seeking to achieve a ban on deportations in the easiest way possible. If all Chechens coming back to Russia from Europe were threatened with special danger, which alone would make their deportation impossible, our common work would be easier. That is not so, but what is much more important is that all of Chechnya's residents need protection currently, because they are facing a real threat of death in their homeland, while their living conditions are unbearable. If it is impossible to stop the slaughter in Chechnya, those few getting out of it have the right to be given asylum in any state party to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees." Source: Civic Assistance committee for refugees
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