| Wednesday, July 7, 2004. Page 3. Zyazikov Frets Over Ingush Abductions By Maria Danilova The Associated Press Ingush President Murat Zyazikov acknowledged Tuesday that the abductions that plague neighboring Chechnya are expanding into his region. "Yes, indeed, there are attempts to spread this to Ingushetia -- and they are not harmless but very serious. But we are fighting against this," Zyazikov said at a news conference. Rights groups have repeatedly said that civilians in Chechnya and now increasingly in Ingushetia -- where tens of thousands of Chechen refugees live -- are subject to abuse, harassment and abductions by federal forces and local security officers. Zyazikov told of seven disappearances in Ingushetia that are being investigated. Rights activists say, however, that there have been several dozen such abductions. Zyazikov also discussed the investigation into last month's rebel attacks in Ingushetia, which left 88 people dead and more than 100 wounded, again raising fears that the violence in Chechnya was spreading beyond its borders. The attackers were international terrorists, Zyazikov said, including Chechens, Ingush, peoples from other North Caucasus republics, as well as other regions, including Central Asia. He called the attackers "international rabble." He said the attacks were partly masterminded and financed from Moscow, but gave no details. He also suggested a willingness to hold talks with rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov. Meanwhile, in a transcript of a videotaped interview published Tuesday on the Kavkaz Center web site, Maskhadov said he had enough rebels at his command to continue the fight for another 20 years, and that his fighters were planning to work hard this summer. However, he renewed his call for negotiations. "There is only one way to end the war: a truce and agreements," Maskhadov said. The Kremlin has been eager to portray Chechnya as stabilizing and has allocated more than 62 billion rubles ($2.14 billion) to rebuild the region since 2000. But Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said Tuesday that the funds were not being spent effectively. He said a list of ruined housing -- for which Chechens are supposed to receive compensation -- has still not be drawn up, the work of federal and regional authorities is poorly coordinated and some programs on which more than 2 billion rubles were spent already have simply been discontinued. "This situation is impermissible because the population is suffering from it," Fradkov said. July 6th 2004 · Prague Watchdog Situation in Chechnya worsens Ruslan Isayev, North Caucasus – The situation in Chechnya has steeply turned for the worse over the past couple of days. Explosions, shoot-outs and kidnappings now occur in various parts of the republic almost on a daily basis. In the morning of July 4, two Russian soldiers died in the Staropromyslovsky district of Grozny during mine clearance. A day earlier a local inhabitant was killed in a land mine blast in the same district. No identity documents were found with the victim. The investigators believe that the man was a guerrilla fighter and died when planting a mine. In the Sunzhensky district, which is located near the border with the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia, five local inhabitants were abducted by a group of unknown armed masked men, who arrived on vehicles without number plates. The Caucasian Knot news agency reported that it was a mopping up operation carried out by Chechen law enforcers and federal soldiers. In the Stariye Atagi village in the Groznensky district, a local inhabitant working at the transport police was kidnapped under the same circumstances. Last but not last, anoter abduction was reported from Grozny. Two days ago, Markha Bakuyeva of the Petropavlovskaya village was pushed into a car in the Leninsky district of the Chechen capital. Her whereabouts are still unknown. Rebel raid the last straw for Chechen refugees in Ingushetia 3 July 2004 ALTIYEVO, (AFP) Russia - Petimat Khatuyeva has no choice but leave the cowshed where she spent the past four years, for all her fears - Ingushetia, the republic neighbouring her war-torn Chechen homeland, can shelter her no longer. Police, who swept the republic after a rebel attack last week, arrested her husband, Vakha Dikayev, during a search of the refugee settlement of Altiyevo, under the pretext of flushing out the assailants whose raid cost 88 lives, mostly among law enforcement forces. "They needed someone to blame, so they swept the refugee camps," Petimat said timidly, cradling her month-old baby in the cramped shelter, which she shares with a dozen other families installed in old cowsheds near Ingushetia's capital Nazran. The only remaining treasure in her room - stripped of everything and heated only due to international charity - are the medals of her husband, seriously wounded in the ill-fated Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and invalid ever since. Masked men stormed into the farm, undressing and beating Vakha and six other Altiyevo men before taking them away, Petimat said. Of her husband's further fate, she learned only that he had been transferred to a prison in the neighboring Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkariya without any information on what precisely his charges were. But another refugee some 50 years old, released after three days of interrogations in the local police office, said on condition of anonymity that he was beaten so he would confess to taking part in the attacks. Petimat - who fled Chechnya in 2000 after her house had been levelled by Russian missiles and who had already had to endure water and gas shortages as part of official pressure on the refugees to return - decided that enough was enough. Thursday morning, a dozen trucks owned by the federal authorities rolled into the farm's court to transport Altiyevo's last refugees - some 100 women, children and elderly - to temporary lodgings in Chechnya's western town of Achkhoi-Martan. "We are afraid of coming back to Chechnya, but we can no longer stand it here," said Petimat, who had already sent her two young sons, aged four and eight, to a cousin in Chechnya, right after her husband's arrest. Mattresses, blankets and empty jars for preserved fruit are all the fortune that Petimat, too wrinkled for her 41 years, can boast. In Ingushetia, the family survived largely due to her husband's chance jobs, his meager pension of a war invalid, and most of all international humanitarian aid. Since the June 22 attack, Chechen refugees - the 50,000 still remaining in Ingushetia - hastened to pack up, the Memorial NGO said. In Altiyevo alone, there used to be over 1,000 before the rebel raid. The last refugees took apart the thin wooden partitions and precious gas pipes to sell them off later. The day nursery, the sole patch of color amid the abandoned squalor, stays behind - managed by the Caritas group, it had just been closed. Before leaving her four-year shelter, Petimat digs up the last potatoes stocked in large bags of US-donated flour. |