| September 23, 2004 THE WORLD Civil Rights Suffer as Fear, Anger Grow in Russia After several bombings and a school hostage crisis, police in Moscow have arrested 11,000 -- most of them from the North Caucasus. By Kim Murphy, the Los Angeles Times Staff Writer MOSCOW — Magomed Tolboyev is a retired Russian air force colonel and a decorated test pilot who flew under the cosmonaut program. He is a recipient of his nation's highest honor, the Hero of Russia award. But on Sept. 8, none of that could compensate for his dark hair and a passport that shows he was born in Dagestan, one of the turbulent republics of the North Caucasus. Police at a downtown subway station demanded Tolboyev's documents, as they do of many Caucasian-looking people these days in the wake of attacks linked to Chechen and other Caucasian insurgents. The officers then grabbed him by his shirt and choked him until he almost passed out. "As an officer, I was deeply insulted," Tolboyev said Wednesday. "I told them their age is small enough to be one of my children. And that they should salute a colonel when they talk to one, and not stand there nibbling sunflower seeds…. But I knew these cops could bundle me into their car, take me away and simply kill me." Tolboyev got an apology from Moscow's police chief. But thousands of other people haven't been as fortunate. In recent days, more than 11,000 people — many of them Caucasians — have been rounded up by police on charges of living in the capital without legal registration. Nearly 900 had been deported by midweek, and reviews of other cases were pending. City officials acknowledge that it often can be difficult for Caucasians to obtain the proper documents, which require exhausting paperwork and a large bribe. But public objections to the arrests have been nearly absent. "I can say that Russia is really standing on its ears right now. Everybody's worried. Everybody's in shock," said Vsevolod Krasnikov, a 19-year-old student in Moscow. "First of all, we need to establish real law and order in Chechnya, because most of the terrorists come from Chechnya. And then we should lock the borders and check out everybody who tries to come here." "Russia is for Russians, and Moscow is for Muscovites," fellow student Denis Bely said. In a survey last month — before a bombing at a Moscow subway, the near-simultaneous crashes of two jetliners and a mass hostage-taking at a school blamed on Chechen insurgents — 46% of Russians in 128 cities favored limits on where natives of the Caucasus can reside. Some Moscow legislators now want to prohibit Caucasians from even entering Russia's capital during periods of insurgent violence. "The Constitution defines 31 rights and freedoms, and I think the most important right and freedom is the right to life," said Moscow city legislator Yury Popov, who proposed the temporary ban. "While I see that realistically we can't ensure for all Muscovites this particular right, I think we have a moral obligation to temporarily restrict some other less important rights … to ensure this most important right, to life." For years, visitors from Chechnya and the surrounding republics have been subject to special scrutiny by Moscow police. But in the last two weeks, since the school siege in Beslan in the Caucasian republic of North Ossetia, police have stepped up their inquiries. Some said they try to stop nearly everyone of Caucasian appearance — meaning dark-haired and dark-skinned. "I look for faces of people from the Caucasus. Dagestanis, Chechens, people like that. First of all, I stop him and check his ID. If his ID looks basically OK on the spot, I still take him [to the subway police office] for further questioning," said Danila Kuliyev, a junior police sergeant in north Moscow whose father is from the Caucasus. Kuliyev said it would be a "good idea" to evict Caucasians from Moscow — though he didn't mention his own family. "If you take them away from the markets and everywhere, it will make the work of the police easier and much more reliable," he said. About 5 a.m. Tuesday, police barged into a hotel room where Zalina Dzandarova and her two children, all of whom had been held hostage in the school at Beslan, were sleeping. The family was in Moscow to visit Dzandarova's sister-in-law, who was hospitalized with serious injuries suffered in the attack. "I said, 'Are you looking for terrorists? If you are, you came to the wrong place. Don't you know we are from Beslan, that we are victims of terrorists?' " Dzandarova said. "I'm sorry," one officer replied. "We have our instructions." Then they proceeded to search the family's bags and peer under the beds. In addition to intense police scrutiny, Caucasians apparently are also being targeted by thugs. On Saturday, about 30 young men entered a subway car and attacked three Caucasians, beating them severely. "They were picking out the dark-skinned people, but when such a big fight started, other people got beaten, too," said Bagrat Pogosian, an Armenian refugee from Azerbaijan who suffered a deep knife wound to his shoulder in the attack. "I screamed, 'Brothers, kill the bastards!' But people were scared, and they were running away…. I went to the very back of the car and started fighting back as strongly as I could. They stabbed at me several times." The other victims, he said, "were beaten up, really, to a pulp." Pogosian, recuperating at a Moscow hospital, said the attackers wore steel-toed boots of the type favored by skinheads. "The way they entered the car, the way they ran away, the way they were obeying orders of the leaders, they were very well-organized," he said. "Basically, they were terrorists without explosives." Popov, the Moscow legislator, has proposed making it easier for newcomers to the city to register legally and imposing heavy fines on employers who hire illegal workers. City statistics, he said, show that 49% of crimes are committed by non-Muscovites — an argument, he said, for his proposal to allow the city to temporarily close its borders to residents of "certain areas." Though his bill is on hold, Popov said the federal Interior Ministry had assured him that "they included a lot of my bill" in its proposed anti-terrorism legislation, part of a still-unpublished package of measures under discussion in parliament. Some Russians worry about what may emerge. "If we start deporting people back to the Caucasus, we will live in a totally different state," said professor Boris Chernyak, 79. "It will be a mono-ethnic state, and a very dangerous one." 23.9.2004 No Chechen Refugee Camp in Ukraine UKRAINE, Kiev. (Our Correspondent) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine believes that the initiative of the Ministers of Internal Affairs of Austria, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia to open a Chechen refugee camp on Ukrainian territory contradicts Ukrainian legislation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine informed PRIMA-News on September 22nd that several days ago, ministers at a meeting in Vienna proposed that Ukraine organize a camp for Chechen refugees with the backing of the European Community. Germany and Italy had previously suggested the creation of such a camp in the north of Africa. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, the internal legislation of Ukraine forbids separating refugees by nationality. As Chechnya is a subject of the Russian Federation, refugees from Chechnya are documented as “Russian refugees”. There are currently no camps in Ukraine for forced immigrants. In Odessa, there is a location where they are occasionally held, which has room for 50 people. To date, there has been no large influx of Chechen refugees into Ukraine. Last year 96 Chechens asked the Immigration Authority in Ukraine to grant them refugee status, but only six were successful. In Ukraine, Chechen refugees make up 11 percent of forced immigrants, so the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sees no basis for creation of a separate “ Chechen Camp”. Translated by OM Kenney [2004-09-22-Ukr-03] Chechenpress The Russian chastisers have killed eighty years woman The edition "Caucasian Unit" referring to puppet administration of Katyr-Jurt (Achhoj-Martan area CHRI) informs details of the crime, accomplished three days ago by chastisers from the Russian occupational grouping concerning family of local residents Mukaev. On September, 18 about 5 o'clock in the morning, chastisers have rushed on territory of home ownership Mukaev located along the street May Day sat Katyr-Jurt area Achhoj-Martan. Invaders have demanded to give out to them Mukaev Magomed. Relatives taking place in the house have informed militarians, that now Magomed Mukaev is outside the Chechen Republic on earnings, in one of regions of the Russian Federation. Not having believed this, russian soldiers have chained handcuffs wife Magomeda Ajzu and his brother Hamid to a pipe of steam heating, and have started to beat the last, demanding immediately to inform a site of the brother. Then Magomeds and Hamids mother Maria Mukaeva (1924 year of birth, the invalid of the first group) has tried to stop tortures of the son, having closed it itself. In reply to it militarians have beaten the elderly woman butts of the automatic device from what that has died. Then chastisers under threat of the weapon have forced Hamid Mukaev to follow with them and have disappeared in a unknown direction. At the moment relatives have no data on a site Hamid Mukaev. Occupational structures declare the non-participation in abduction Hamid Mukaev and Maria Mukaevoj's murder. As relatives inform, Magomed Mukaev did not take part in operations during the second military campaign. 22.09.04 The Chechen Times 24.09.2004 Cleaning-Up Operations and Aircraft Attacks in Chechnya A large-scale «zachistka» was carried out on 22 September in the settlement of Assinovskaya in the Sunzhensky District. The village was blockaded by units of Federal Forces and searches and arrests were made by «Kadyrovites» and representatives of other Chechen forces. 62 people were arrested, but later released. Only two local residents, Zaur Sulimov and Isa Bakaev, remain in detention. At the same time, a number of areas in the foothills and mountain districts of Chechnya were subjected to intensive air attacks from Federal Forces causing destruction and casualties among the civilian population. Attacks were carried out in the districts of Vedeno, Shatoy, Itum-Kalin and Achkoi-Martan. In the evening of 22 September near the village of Shari, a farmer was injured and 12 heads of full-grown horned cattle were killed. In the Shatoy District, a residential building on the outskirts of Sovietsky was damaged. In the Itum-Kalin District, a dairy was bombed and 4 cows were killed. In the village of Dai in the Shatoy District, 29-year-old Ayub Ayubov and his brother, 28-year-old Salman, were burnt alive when their truck was hit. SRChF Rights commissioner against freeing Chechen girl's killer Friday, Sep. 24, 2004, 6:57 PM Moscow Time GROZNY. Sept 24 (Interfax) - The Russian human rights commissioner has condemned the Ulyanovsk authorities for seeking a pardon for a Russian army officer who is serving a 10-year sentence in their region for abducting and murdering a 17-year-old Chechen girl. Col. Yury Budanov, a former tank regiment commander in Chechnya, accused his victim, Elza Kungayeva, of being a rebel sniper. He seized her from her home in Chechen village in 2000 and brought her to his base. After questioning the girl, he strangled her and ordered his soldiers to bury the body Lyoma Khasuyev new Chechen human rights commissioner Ruslan Isayev, North Caucasus – Chechen lawyer Lyoma Khasuyev became the new human rights ombudsman of the Chechen Republic until that time when a new parliament of the republic is elected. He was designated at a human rights protection conference that started in Grozny on September 24. Among the participants were Alvaro Gil-Robles, Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe; Ella Pamfilova, chairperson of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Commission; and Moscow- backed Chechen President Alu Alkhanov. Representatives of Russian and Chechen human rights organizations also took part in the event. Chechen human rights defender Ruslan Badalov told our PW correspondent that he believes a man like Khasuyev being elected Chechen ombudsman will not improve the human rights situation in Chechnya. "Lyoma Khasuyev, when working as deputy to the special commissioner of the Russian President for protection of human rights in Chechnya, was totally loyal to authorities who violate those rights. This man is exactly the one they need to cover up violations that they themselves commit. Unfortunately, Commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles keeps taking part in these games," Badalov said. http://www.watchdog.cz/?show=000000-000008-000001-000339&lang=1 Sep 25 2004 7:33PM CE rights chief voices satisfaction with Chechnya visit GROZNY. Sept 25 (Interfax) - Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles has expressed deep satisfaction with the results of a trip he made to Chechnya. During his visit, he took part in a conference entitled "Human Rights Problems in the Chechen Republic" and had meetings with Chechen President-elect Alu Alkhanov. Gil-Robles described the atmosphere of his talks with Alkhanov as completely open and said the president-elect had shown openness and a desire for extensive cooperation with the Council of Europe in dealing with Chechen problems. Gil-Robles, on his own behalf and on that of the entire international democratic community, promised Alkhanov complete support and help in efforts to prevent the disappearance of people. The commissioner said priorities were set at his meetings with Alkhanov - action against impunity, people's disappearance, and efforts to build a civil society. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sep 25 2004 7:31PM CE: Chechnya should have human remains identification lab GROZNY. Sept 25 (Interfax) - The Council of Europe on Saturday offered to help Chechnya set up a laboratory to identify human remains, arguing that such identification would help cut the list of missing people. At a meeting in the Chechen capital Grozny with Chechen President- elect Alu Alkhanov, Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles said people whose relatives had gone missing kept looking for them for a long time and would do so before they found out what had happened to those who had disappeared. The commissioner said the Council of Europe would be able to give Chechnya technical help in organizing such a lab and supply equipment for it. He said the Council had given such assistance in Kosovo and elsewhere and that this had produced results. Alkhanov and Gil-Robles decided to reconvene in six months' time and deal with this and other matters in detail. Sunday, September 26, 2004 Rights group slams Russian violations in Chechnya SOFIA: An international rights group Saturday accused Russia of encouraging terrorism through its human rights abuses in Chechnya and rejected Moscow’s claims that the decade-long conflict was an internal affair. “The Chechenya crisis is the worst humanitarian crisis in the region,” Aaron Rhodes, the head of the international Helsinki Federation, told a press conference in Sofia. There have been “hundreds of thousands of murder and deaths during the last 10 years,” he added. “There are war crimes being committed in Chechenya,” he said, adding “the responsibility is with the Russian government” and warning that “the implications of this crisis are major, first of all terrorism.” “Human rights violation is not an internal affair. Encouragement of terrorism reflects on Europe, on all civilized countries,” Rhodes said. On Friday pro-Russian Chechen officials joined with rights campaigners in slamming widespread abuses against civilians in Chechnya at a conference held in the Chechen capital Grozny to highlight the violence in the breakaway republic. afp The Telegraph Moscow steps up its reign of terror in Chechnya after the horrors of Beslan siege By Tom Parfitt (Filed: 26/09/2004) It was just after 5pm on Saturday two weeks ago when Anzor Machiev, Alikhan Vitaev and a third friend from their Chechen town approached a junction with the main Grozny road in their battered Lada. At the crossroads, several vehicles with blacked-out windows were waiting. As the Lada braked, six figures in camouflage and masks got out and unleashed a hail of automatic gunfire into the car. Then they calmly walked up to the wreck and fired a "control shot" into the head of each of the unarmed victims to ensure that he was dead. A handful of stunned taxi drivers watched as the attackers - thought to be security forces loyal to Moscow - lingered for a moment before driving away, leaving the bodies sprawled on the road. A month after the Beslan school siege in North Ossetia, in which more than 340 people died at the hands of mostly Chechen militants, Russia's reign of terror appears to be continuing in neighbouring Chechnya. The people of Sernovodsk - a ramshackle former spa town of 15,000 inhabitants, 25 miles west of the Chechen capital, Grozny - say that execution, torture and kidnap are a familiar part of their lives. Since the Beslan attack, they have noticed a military build-up in the once prosperous holiday destination for Soviet functionaries. Less than a week after the siege ended in a bloodbath, a unit of 100 Omon (police special forces) troops was dispatched from Perm, in western Russia. President Vladimir Putin came to power with a promise to resolve the Chechnya problem by force. After the 1994-96 war with Moscow, Chechen rebels made a fresh bid for independence in 1999 - a campaign quashed by Mr Putin to popular acclaim. Although Moscow insists that its activities in Chechnya are part of a continuing "anti-terror operation", many locals say that the reverse is true. The Russian forces' brutal treatment of civilians is a driving force behind young men and women's decision to seek revenge by joining separatist terrorist groups. Criminal cases are sometimes opened into the raids but the investigations rarely yield results. In the chaos that has engulfed the republic since its Moscow-backed leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, was assassinated in May, nobody knows which of Chechnya's many fragmented security forces are to blame. Several units of Mr Kadyrov's personal guard are believed to be working independently as rogue militia. Compounding the chaos, soldiers and police officers - many of them local men, in line with Mr Putin's policy of "Chechenizing" the conflict - often act with impunity. At the funeral of Mr Vitaev - a 24-year-old construction worker who had been hitching a lift with his two friends - his father summed up Chechens' feelings of desperation. "If only they just told us why they did it - a criminal act, a blood feud, something," he said. "Then maybe we would be able to accept it with dignity. Like this, we have no idea why he was killed." His murder on September 11 was more brazen than most. Locals claim that the masked men in uniform usually come under cover of darkness, driving military or police vehicles without registration plates. They rarely say who they are, or give details of their victims' alleged crimes. In the past year, 17 people have disappeared without trace from Sernovodsk. Security has been stepped up this month in spite of the fact that there has been no heavy fighting in the area for more than four years. Many local people expect a turn for the worse. "We are sitting on a powder keg," said Dano Gubanova, a lawyer investigating several suspected abductions in the area. Last week a full-scale "cleansing operation" was in progress in the neighbouring village of Assinovskaya, a sign of a fresh crackdown since Beslan. Troops blocked all roads to the village and young men were taken to a police checkpoint for questioning. Previously, detainees have been hit or tortured during questioning, villagers say. One favoured technique involves forcing a man to drink large amounts of water before beating him around the kidneys. Rather than deterring Chechens from joining the guerrillas, such treatment often has the opposite effect. "They are only breeding resistance and terrorism," said Baudi Magomaev, the deputy director of the Sernovodsk agricultural college. His brother Khamidi, a 48-year-old farmer, was dragged from his fields last month by masked men and has not been heard of since. His younger brother, Shadit, disappeared in similar circumstances two years ago. "If someone is accused of something, the security forces could arrest him, charge him, take him to court," said Mr Magomaev, 55, who denies that his brothers were linked to the militants. "Instead, they kidnap men, who are never seen again." He added: "I was sorry about what happened in Beslan; the way children got treated. But here we also live in fear." Malika Saidullaeva, 28, a housewife who lives with her extended family in Sernovodsk, still has a scar on her hand where she was shot by a man wearing military fatigues during a night raid by an armed gang last month. Her brother, Imran, did not survive. During the raid he was shot in the leg, and allegedly responded by stabbing one of his assailants, although the family denies he had a knife. Miss Saidullaeva said that as Imran was being treated later at the local hospital, the armed men - whose leader said he was a senior police officer - came to the ward and killed him. "He was trying to lift himself up between two beds and one of them just put a Kalashnikov to his chest and fired," said Miss Saidullaeva. Police returned her brother's corpse after 600 people protested at their HQ. Sultan Irbayev, the Sernovodsk director of the human rights group Memorial said: "Putin is talking of increased security measures but all that will mean is more repression." At a conference in Chechnya on Friday, pro-Russian Chechen officials made an unprecendented attack on the widespread abuses against civilians. Taus Jabrailov, a senior member of Grozny's pro-Moscow government, denounced "10 years of war which destroyed 80 per cent of the infrastructure, killed thousands of people and trampled on Chechens' rights. Separatist fighters are accused of assassinating a series of pro-Moscow officials in Chechnya. The more radical rebels have long since switched their energies to launching terror attacks across Russia. telegraph.co.uk |