|
3 March 2004, Volume
V, Issue 09 As of March 1, the federal and Ingush authorities had not fully succeeded in their campaign to close all the refugee camps in Ingushetia by that date. But they were getting closer. An official of the Kadyrov administration told Interfax on March 1 that the Bart refugee camp in the Ingush town of Karabulak had been officially closed. That leaves only two tent camps still operating in the Ingush republic: Satsita and Sputnik. Said Bitsoev reported in a March 1 article for Novye izvestia that on the previous day the Kadyrov administration's migration service had reiterated its determination to close all the refugee camps in the near future. Lema Bichuev, deputy head of that agency, claimed that five new resettlement centers were being opened within Chechnya. It seems clearer than ever that the goal is to get all the refugees back into their homeland before Russia's mid-March presidential election. The father of one Chechen family in the Bart camp was interviewed in late February--as the family was fearfully packing for its return to Chechnya--by a correspondent of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting. The father said that "everyone from the president right down to the last bureaucrat in Ingushetia's migration service constantly tells us that there will be no forced return of Chechen refugees to the homeland, but in actual fact it's not like that at all....Forced migrants are being threatened, blackmailed and such unbearable conditions are being created that they are basically being forced to leave." Some of the most suggestive findings and reflections yet published on the phenomenon of kidnapping in Chechnya can be found in a long interview given by Oleg Orlov of the Russian human rights center Memorial to Andrei Riskin of Nezavisimaya gazeta. The full text is in that newspaper's February 27 issue. "During the course of 2003," said Orlov, "we twice noticed a steep drop in the number of kidnappings--in March and in September-October, that is, during the periods of preparing and holding the [constitutional] referendum and then the presidential elections for the Chechen Republic. This leads one to think that the structures which are engaged in kidnapping people are under some kind of central direction. When the authorities need for whatever reason to stabilize the situation, to give potential voters hope for its improvement, the appropriate orders are given and the kidnappings are halted." "Who is responsible for most of the kidnappings?" asked Riskin. Orlov said that kidnap victims who had been released often told Memorial that, while captive, they were interrogated about their neighbors' relations with the rebel guerrillas and about hidden caches of weapons. These are just the sort of questions that would interest the pro-Moscow forces, not the rebels. The findings of the human rights group also suggest that the role of Kadyrov's gunmen, as distinct from the federal armed services, is growing. More and more often the captors are Chechens rather than Russians, and some of those subsequently released have said that they were held in the village of Tsentoroy, where Kadyrov's private army is based. Orlov also discussed a pro-Moscow Chechen force which is not directly under Kadyrov's command: The so-called ORB-2 ("Operativno-razysknoe byuro" or "Operational Search Bureau"), subordinate to the federal interior ministry. This agency, he said, openly operates an unauthorized prison in Grozny. Memorial has discussed this issue with the federal procuracy, which claims to have repeatedly requested the interior ministry to "legalize" this prison by giving it formal status--but with no result. "Naturally, there are no normal records of detainees there," he said. The human rights group's statistical data on kidnappings are far from complete, cautioned Orlov, because Memorial is unable to monitor the entire territory of Chechnya. He said he believes that he and his colleagues learn of only one-fourth or one-third of all cases. Their figure of 477 disappearances for 2003 was 12 percent lower than the total for the previous year, but the statistics are so imprecise that the difference is within the margin of error. Orlov found a telling flaw in the official statistics provided by the interior ministry. Last August, he noted, the ministry stated that so far 380 Chechen civilians had disappeared in 2003. But in October they announced precisely the same number. "Can it really be," he asked, "that during a two-month period there was not one case of kidnapping?" Memorial has so far learned of thirty-six kidnappings that took place in January of 2004. Of these victims, seventeen were released. The ransom price depends on a family's wealth; it can be as high as US$10,000. "This business, alas, is thriving," said Orlov. Orlov also touched on the question of "zachistki" security sweeps, which he agreed have become fewer but which he said are still conducted as cruelly as ever, "with robbery and extortion." A relatively new feature is that "during the last two months they have been kidnapping many, many women--more in January than in December. In this case the kidnappers are structures controlled by the federal forces, not Kadyrovites....This is a struggle against the so-called 'shakhidi' [female suicide bombers]." Last August, he noted, the FSB directorate for Chechnya stated that his agency is holding the relatives of kidnapping victims responsible for links with "shakhid" terrorism. Thus, Orlov concluded, the FSB has in effect admitted that the phenomenon of female suicide bombings "is not some sort of plague from the Arabs, but the offspring of its own policies." Yury Shchekochikhin, the antiwar journalist and Duma member who died last year under mysterious circumstances (see Chechnya Weekly, July 10, 2003), preserved this haunting quotation from a conversation of his with Chechen diplomat Akhmed Zakaev. It may be found in Shchekochikhin's book, Forgotten Chechnya, Moscow, 2003. Zakaev told him that "for the time being there are still Chechens for you to negotiate with....those who grew up earlier when there was no war, who graduated from Russian colleges, who used to read books and listen to music, who at least know some names from literature and history. But now Chechens are coming who will kill you just because you are a Russian, and me too at the same time: Those who have never seen anything except war. Even before the war, under Dudaev, they did not see much; all the cultured levels of society were being uprooted...Sooner or later it will be necessary for you to negotiate with somebody...but how?" The International Helsinki Group has called on the Russian authorities to annul the results of last October's presidential election in Chechnya. According to a February 24 report on the website Grani.ru, the human rights organization cited the "flagrant violations" of free and fair procedures which took place during the election campaign. Copyright (c) 2000-2004 The Jamestown Foundation
|