| Estonian Radio Forth
Programme 17 February 2004 [BBC Monitoring]
Estonian MPs set up group in support of Chechen human rights A group of deputies in the Estonian parliament on Tuesday [17 February] set up an association for the human rights in Chechnya. The group is headed by Andres Herkel, the initiator of the idea, who is a member of the opposition Fatherland Alliance faction. Alongside Herkel, the following of the Fatherland Alliance joined the association: Tunne Kelam [the party's chairman], Tonis Lukas and Trivimi Velliste, as well as Jurgen Ligi, Silver Meikar and Leino Magi of the [ruling] Reform Party and Tiit Matsulevits of the [ruling] Union for the Republic Res Publica. Herkel said that the deputy group in support of Chechnya existed also in the seventh, eighth and ninth convocations of the Estonian parliament.
16 February 2004 Man shot dead in Chechen village Coicil of Nogovernmental Organizations web site on 15 February Law- enforcement officers shot a local inhabitant, Rustam Amriyev, on 9 February in the village of Assinovskaya in Sunzhenskiy District in Chechnya. According to evidence from witnesses in the village of Assinovskaya, the law-enforcers arrived in the village in several light vehicles with tinted windows. After blockading the Amriyevs' house, they burst in and shot Rustam. Witnesses to the incident say that the officers from an unidentified law-enforcement department took the corpse of the dead man away with them. The motives for the crime are not known.
eng.kavkaz.memo.ru 17/2/2004 On 24 February, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court will consider a complaint lodged by the All-Russian Public Movement "For Human Rights" about the denial of the Moscow Prosecutor's Office to single out from the materials of criminal case No 229133 materials that contain information about new crimes, to open criminal cases in connection with the chosen materials, and to conduct a preliminary investigation into the actions of: * the officers of special services who committed murders, exceeding measures necessary to detain the criminals who committed the armed attack and took hostages during the developments of 23-26 October 2002 in the Theatre Center on Dubrovka; * the senior medical workers affiliated with the operational headquarters, who did not take necessary measures to provide opportune medical aid to hostages; * the operational headquarters officials who gave the order to use derivatives of fentanyl, a narcotic substance, as a special remedy against more than 800 hostages. The human rights activists found the denial to launch criminal investigations illegal. The All-Russian Public Movement "For Human Rights" holds that workers of the prosecutor's office continue to violate constitutional rights of the public movement's members, who advocate rights of the people suffered during the storm of the Theatre Center. The violation is that they limit their access to justice. The conclusion follows from the comparison between statements by the presidential contender Irina Khakamada and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov: the decision on the storm, which ended with the death of every fifth hostage and extrajudicial execution of the terrorists, whose evidence could have helped prevent new crimes, was made from political considerations in order not to create a precedent of official talks with Chechen separatists. Humanitarian and legal considerations - to save as many hostages as possible and to detain the criminals - were apparently shifted to the background. Source: All-Russian Public Movement "For Human Rights" Brussels, 17 February 2004. The Moscow City Council today banned the demonstration to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the deportation of the Chechen people on the orders of Stalin on 23 February 1944. The demonstration has been organised by the Transnational Radical Party, the Movement for Human Rights, the Action Committee against the war in Chechnya, the Andrei Sakharov Centre, the Russian Radicals and the Club against the war. Without giving any reasons, the Moscow city authorities informed Andrei Rodionov, Nikolai Khramov and Lev Ponomarev of the decision not to allow the demonstration. Statement by Olivier Dupuis, Member of the European Parliament, Radical: "For those who still need to reflect further on the way Russia is developing, this new attack on a fundamental right - the right to demonstrate - may help them finally to gauge the progress of the Rule of Law and democracy in Russia since Mr Putin came to power in 1999. There is not a single sector of public life in Russia (not to mention what is happening in Chechnya) - the judicial system, the freedom of _expression, the freedom of the press, the freedom of association or, as in this case, the right to demonstrate - in which there has not been an escalation of clear violations of the fundamental rights recognised by the Russian Constitution and by the principal international Conventions, and consequently a constant erosion of the Rule of Law." www.radicalparty.org =====
OSCE, Russia Agree to Work in Chechnya Reuters Russia agreed Tuesday to work with Europe's biggest rights organization to help rebuild Chechnya. The announcement heralds the resumption of activity in Chechnya by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which Moscow obliged to withdraw from the republic at the end of 2002. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Solomon Passy, the OSCE chairman and Bulgarian foreign minister, said they had agreed to come up with proposals for projects to rebuild Chechnya. "These programs will be elaborated by working groups. And we hope that in the near future we will come to a mutual agreement," Ivanov said at a news conference. Passy said he believed initial proposals would be modest, but welcomed Russia's agreement. "Of course, in the beginning ... we cannot do miracles. But in order to do miracles, we have to start from somewhere. That's why I welcome the readiness of the Russian government to cooperate with the OSCE," he said. Ivanov sidestepped a question on whether talks with Passy had covered human rights and democratic institutions in Russia, including electoral law and a free press -- issues raised by his French, German and U.S. counterparts in recent Moscow visits. (snip)
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