| Wednesday, February 16, 2005. Issue
3107. Page 2. State Is Failing Terror Victims, Survivors and Relatives Claim The Associated Press The government is failing to provide adequate help to victims of terrorism, denying survivors medical and psychological treatment and neglecting orphaned children, victims of attacks said at a meeting in Moscow on Tuesday. Tatyana Karpova, co-chair of a group of former hostages and relatives of victims of the October 2002 Dubrovka theater hostage crisis that left 129 hostages dead from the effects of a narcotic gas, said many survivors are not being provided treatment for health problems. Speaking at a meeting attended by terror victims and state officials, Karpova presented medical records of dozens of theater-raid survivors who developed ailments including memory loss, hearing disorders and heart problems blamed on the gas. She said there is no comprehensive program to provide free medical care to gas victims. Olga Grachyova, deputy head of the Moscow city government's social security department, called for a clear-cut federal program on aiding terrorist victims. Dmitry Milovidov, who lost his son at the theater, said that the government has also failed to take care of children whose parents died in terrorist attacks. Milovidov said 67 children became orphans at Dubrovka and that many of them are being cared for by grandparents. "Many old couples have been forced to sell their apartments in Moscow" and move to cheaper apartments, Milovidov said. Activists also called for laws that would give survivors of terrorist attacks, and their relatives, special status entitling them to financial support and certain privileges, including a possible exemption from compulsory army service. Susanna Dudiyeva, 44, who lost her son in last September's Beslan school seizure, said that the state has forgotten about the victims. "These were our children who took the bullets on themselves ... but it could have been other children, your children!" Dudiyeva said bitterly. Thursday, February 17, 2005. Issue 3108. Page 3. Chechen Abductions Ignored, Activists Say By Nabi Abdullaev Staff Writer Human rights activists on Wednesday accused the federal government of turning a blind eye to the abduction of hundreds of civilians in Chechnya by federal troops and Chechen forces under the command of Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov. Increasingly indiscriminate abductions have instilled among Chechen civilians a sense of terror more intense and overwhelming than they suffered during the military phase of federal operations, the activists told a news conference. "If anyone thought, during the fighting in Chechnya, that it could not get any worse, he was mistaken," said Anna Neistat, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. "In some places in Chechnya, people who managed to survive two wars are so terrorized today that they do not leave their homes and are afraid to speak out." Even if the abductions were carried out by local forces, such as those under the control of Kadyrov or other pro-Moscow Chechen commanders, under international law the responsibility for protecting human rights lies with the federal government, Neistat said. Neistat and Alexander Petrov, the deputy head of Human Rights Watch's Moscow office, said they had recently returned from a two-week trip to Chechnya where they had researched 50 abduction cases from the second half of 2004. Kadyrov's militia carried out two-thirds of the abductions studied, while federal troops carried out the other third, Neistat said. In none of these cases had relatives of those kidnapped reacted by joining the rebels, she said. The pattern of the abductions had also changed, Neistat said, from large groups of almost exclusively young men in cleanup operations to selected individuals, including many women, older people and teenagers. "The kidnappers' motivations are also different," Neistat said. "Often they demand a ransom, while in other cases they torture people and demand they name rebels among their acquaintances. When the torture goes too far, victims usually disappear without trace." In a report released Wednesday, human rights watchdog Memorial said it had tracked 396 abduction cases in Chechnya last year. Memorial said half of the people were freed or ransomed, in some cases after having been tortured. Twenty-four people were found dead, sometimes with signs of torture, and 173 were still missing, the report said. Only in 10 cases had people been registered as legally arrested, between 10 days and several weeks after their abduction, it said. Officials have presented often contradictory statistics about the number of kidnappings in Chechnya. In December, federal human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin said that over 1,700 criminal investigations into abductions had been opened in the republic over the first 11 months of 2004. But Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov told Itar-Tass last month that only 168 people had been kidnapped in the republic last year. Also in January, Chechen Security Council chief Rudnik Dudayev told the agency that more than 500 people had been abducted in 2004. The republic's chief prosecutor, Vladimir Kravchenko, told Interfax on Wednesday that seven Chechen law enforcement officers had been convicted for involvement in abductions in 2004. Neistat also noted an increase in rebels' relatives being taken hostage, a practice supported by Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov after the Beslan hostage-taking raid last September. In the recent abductions of eight relatives of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, she said, witnesses said the kidnappers had openly claimed they were acting under orders from Kadyrov. Kadyrov has consistently denied any involvement in the abductions. He has recently threatened legal action against journalists and rights activists who have accused him of the abductions. Chechenpress Chechen refugees in Moldova : from the military hell to the hell of bureaucracy One year ago Chechen refugees, who were in the Republic of Moldova pending of reception of the refugee status, driven to despair by chronic ignoring of their problems, were compelled to declare a hunger-strike. At the 8-th day after one of us was taken away by doctors in the condition of extreme exhaustion, the Representative of the UVKB of the United Nations in the Republic of Moldova Lars Yonnson interfered, and our requirements about the minimal validity were partly satisfied. But it was for a short time. In three months, in summer of the last year, the situation became worse, than before the hunger-strike what compelled the refugees to carry out a press conference in the agency "Infotag". However the result became not increase of attention to our daily problems, but going to courts, which the head of the organization "Salvati copi" Vasiliy Batku arranged to us. His organization is a partner of the UVKB of the United Nations in Moldova and should render assistance and help to refugees; however instead of it Batku makes every possible obstacle to the refugees, not loathing thus anything. Batku promised "to break hands and legs" to one of the unofficial leaders of the movement of the refugees, Beslan Vakalishev, who was holding the press conference. The policy carried out by the director of the Central administrative management on affairs of refugees of the Department of migration of the RM Ekaterina Silvestru differs from the policy carried out by Batku with practically nothing. Since the moment when the right to give the refugee status passed from the UVKB of the United Nations in the RM to the state structures, only two people from hundred, who applied for the status, received the positive answer. And it happens, when the majority of refugees arrived from the Chechen Republic, where during the last years the real "hell on the earth" was established. Refugees from the Chechen Republic without problems receive the status in any country of European Union. They received the status in Moldova as well while the representation of the UVKB of the United Nations in the RM was engaged in this procedure. The management of the Republic of Moldova proclaimed the strategic purpose of the integration into the European Union; however, the Central administrative management of affairs of refugees led by Ekaterina Silvestru operates as if Moldova is a part of the Union Russia-Belarus. Together with Vasiliy Batku Ekaterina Silvestru also is engaged in intimidating refugees. The exponential case: one of the refugees having the status (!) was invited by her to her office, where then representatives of the law-enforcement bodies were called and they took the innocent person. Later they enclosed him a pack with unknown substance and when they were releasing him, threatened that "they had him on a hook". The given fact in appropriate way is fixed in the Helsinki Committee of human rights in the Republic of Moldova. There are tens of cases when the rights of refugees are not observed. To our big regret, the representation of the UVKB of the United Nations in the RM has practically put down the decision of the problems, connected to the refugees. Actually everything is being done so that to compel refugees to return to the region, where they can be killed and crippled. It is a direct infringement of the Convention of refugees and the Law of the RM about refugees. We can not struggle for our elementary rights any more. The situation has reached the deadlock, when nobody wants and is not going to promote the observance of the rights of refugees, including the rights for integration into the civil society of the Republic of Moldova . Moreover, we DO NOT FEEL SAFE! Under these circumstances we are compelled to declare a hunger-strike. Our main requirement: if the structures responsible for the condition status of refugees do not want to provide the due attitude to refugees, in that case we demand from the Representative of the UVKB of the United Nations in the RM Lars Yonnson to give us the corresponding documents giving the right for an unobstructed travel to one of the countries, where human rights are observed, for example to one of the countries of the European Union. The hunger-strike will be continued until our requirements will be accomplished, and in case of postponing their accomplishing we shall be compelled to declare a dry hunger-strike. The Initiative Group of Refugees in the Republic of Moldova : Vakalishev Beslan Visaitov Ruslan Machiev Yunus Amaev Visait Abdullaev Ramzan Naser Said-Magomed Our address: the small town “Airport”, Dachia 60/4 Contact phone numbers: 524278, 069682965 (to ask Beslan) Chechenpress, the Department of the operative information 16.02.05 http://chechenpress.co.uk/english/news/2005/02/16/03.shtml RUSSIA: CPJ concerned about journalist's pending deportation New York, February 15, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is disturbed that the Russian government is planning to deport Yuri Bagrov, a journalist who has covered the North Caucasus for The Associated Press and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, in retaliation for his independent reporting on the war in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya. An official from the Interior Ministry's Passport and Visa Service in the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz came to Bagrov's office today and summoned him to the passport office tomorrow morning to be informed of his pending deportation, Bagrov said in a telephone interview with CPJ today. The official told Bagrov that the Federal Security Services (FSB) has issued a document declaring that he is "residing illegally in the Russian Federation," and that the Leninsky Court in Vladikavkaz will issue an order regarding his deportation. Bagrov does not know to where he will be deported. In December, the Leninsky Court convicted Bagrov on criminal charges of knowingly using falsified documents to obtain Russian citizenship. The journalist appealed the verdict in January before the Supreme Court of North Ossetia but lost the appeal. Bagrov has received death threats, is being prevented from working as a journalist by local authorities, and is unable to travel outside Vladikavkaz because government officials have invalidated and confiscated his identity documents. "We are alarmed by the Russian government's efforts to deport Yuri Bagrov and call on President Vladimir Putin to ensure that local authorities protect him, provide him with identity papers, allow him to continue working as a journalist, and ensure that the charges against him are not politically motivated," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. Background On August 25, 2004, agents from the local FSB branch raided Bagrov's apartment, his office, and his mother's apartment. FSB agents presented a court order authorizing them to search for weapons, ammunition, drugs, and forgery-related items. They confiscated Bagrov's passport and other personal documents, personal and work computers, computer disks, film, tape recorder and tapes, and his wife's diaries, according to local and international press reports. Several unidentified men followed him for several days after the raid, Bagrov said. Also during that time, unidentified assailants stole his wife's passport. Bagrov has reported for the AP since 1999, writing numerous stories that included closely held casualty figures for Russian military and police forces in Chechnya, information that sometimes differed from the official figures. Bagrov is also known for investigative reporting, including a February 10, 2004, story on the radicalization of Chechen rebels and a May 24, 2004, story on a wave of mysterious abductions in the southern republic of Ingushetia. © 2005 Committee to Protect Journalists. http://www.cpj.org E-mail: info@cpj.org http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/Russia15feb05na.html |