| PRESS-RELEASE
#1208 FROM MARCH 15, 2005 URGENT REPORT Editor of IC RCFS Oksana Chelysheva subjected to personal threats On March 14, 2005, around 8 p.m. in the area around apartment buildings 12, 14, and 16 on Iyulskikh Dney street in the city of Nizhni Novgorod, unknown individuals distributed flyers, which contained slanderous claims, insults, and direct threats, and which displayed the address of Oksana Anatol'evna Chelysheva, editor of the Information Center of the inter-regional non-governmental organization “Russian-Chechen Friendship Society”. The flyers, which were printed on thin, yellowed paper in A4 format were distributed in the mailboxes of residents in apartment buildings 12, 14, and 16 on Iyulskikh Dney street, and were also posted with tape on the doorways of the apartment buildings. Chelisheva lives in one of the aforementioned buildings. The text of the flyer reads as follows: “Young Patriotic Front (A.P. Ivanov) Dear fellow citizens! The whole world has tired of terrorists, parents fear for their children. Our country is suffering one tragedy after another, our sons and daughters are perishing; the young generation which is the future of our country. But there are “beasts” among us that are profiting from the tragedies brought on the majority, from the enormous and unique grief any person feels who loses near ones. These people live among us, they look like regular law-abiding citizens, but support terrorist activities carried out by Chechen rebels, receive money from them and offer them all kinds of help. One of them live among you, “Chechen whore” OKSANA CHELYSHEVA (here follows the address of Oksana Chelysheva) She is shameful and contemptible! We are ready to fight her” Today after 2 p.m. Oksana Chelysheva and Executive director of RCFS Stanislav Dmitrievskiy will submit a complaint to the Nizhni Novgorod region prosecutor. In the complaint the human rights activists state: “We consider the individuals who printed and distributed the present flyer to have, at a minimum, committed crimes in accordance with paragraph 3, article 129 in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (slander associated with accusations of completely and fundamentally grave criminal acts), article 137 in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (violation of right to privacy), and article 213 in the Criminal Code (hooliganism). We also believe that this act was committed with the aim to hinder the legal activities of the inter-regional non-governmental organization “Russian-Chechen Friendship Society” by intimidating one of its leaders. In light of the case brought by the regional prosecutor on January 11 in relation to the publication in the paper “Pravo-Zashchito” of two appeals made by Aslan Maskhadov and Akhmed Zakaev for peaceful negotiations in the Russian-Chechen conflict; and in light of the audit of our organization, carried out by the tax inspector and the administrative head of the ministry of justice in the Nizhni Novgorod region, we have reasons to believe that the distribution of this flyer is part of a general scheme to impede the organization's activities realized by the governmental agencies of the Russian state. Oksana Chelysheva's address was known only by a limited number of people, including officials from the Federal Security Service in Nizhni Novgorod region who seized documents from the office of Russian-Chechen Friendship Society on January 20, 2005. We thus have reasons to assume that these criminal acts were committed by individuals with connections to the Nizhni Novgorod FSB. The human rights activists intend to ask the prosecutor to open a criminal case based on these facts. At the same time, in Stanislav Dmitrievskiy's view, “there is little hope that this case will be investigated or the perpetrators found”. As has been reported earlier, on January 11, 2005, the Nizhni Novgorod province prosecutor opened a criminal case based on the second paragraph, article 280 in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (public incitement to carry out acts of extremism) regarding the publication in the paper "Pravo-Zashchita" of two statements by Aslan Maskhadov and Akmed Zakaev appealing for peaceful negotiations in the Russian-Chechen conflict. The investigation is being conducted by the Nizhni Novgorod province FSB. "Pravo-Zashchita" is jointly published by IC RCFS and the Nizhny Novgorod Society for Human Rights. On January 20 the editor in chief of the publication Stanislav Dmitrievskiy was called as a witness in the case, and documents were seized in the joint offices of the two organizations, in particular the employee contracts of people working in Chechnya. In the past days the FSB has interrogated a number of other workers at IC RCFS. Earlier, since March 1, the FSB have called for questioning present and former workers for the information center; namely Khedi Idalova, Minkail Ezhiev, Kilab Ezhiev, Zurani Kuzumova (Grozniy FSB), Vokazu Khalitov (Gudermesskiy FSB), and Zelimkhan Islamov (Shalinskiy FSB) and Petimat Tokaeva (Achkhoy-Martanovskiy FSB). In March the tax inspector and the administrative head of the ministry of justice in the Nizhni Novgorod region simultaneously initiated audits of the activities of RCFS. The justice department audited the organization in July 2004 and did then not find any violations of the law. Editor in Chief Stanislav Dmitrievskiy Editor of this edition Oksana Chelysheva -------------------- Scanned image of the leaflet follows: http://friendly.narod.ru/2005-1e/info1208e.htm On the case of the SRCF see also: http://www.hrvc.net/htmls/srcf2.html RUSSIA: Authorities intensify persecution of independent newspaper New York, March 16, 2005—Russian authorities in Chechnya and the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod are escalating their campaign of harassment and intimidation against Pravo-Zashchita (Rights Defense), a monthly newspaper that covers human rights abuses in Chechnya, according to local press reports. The newspaper is published by the nongovernmental organization Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS) and is distributed in the North Caucasus and several other Russian cities. In early March, Nizhny Novgorod tax inspectors and local officials with the Main Directorate for Justice began investigating the RCFS's activities. At the same time, Federal Security Service (FSB) agents in Chechnya questioned seven RCFS reporters and former employees about their work for the RCFS. "We call on President Vladimir Putin to ensure that the FSB and other government agencies end their campaign of harassment against journalists working for the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. On the evening of March 14, unidentified individuals in Nizhny Novgorod distributed leaflets threatening an editor working at RCFS, Oksana Chelysheva. The following day, RCFS issued a statement accusing the FSB of orchestrating the abuses against them. Background On November 26, 2004, the Nizhny Novgorod regional prosecutor's office summoned Pravo-Zashchita Editor-in-Chief Stanislav Dmitriyevsky for questioning about articles the newspaper had published earlier in the year that included statements made by Chechen rebel leaders calling for peace talks. The March 2004 edition of Pravo-Zashchita included a statement made by the London-based Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev, and the April-May 2004 edition included a speech made by Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov to the Strasbourg, France–based European Parliament. On January 11, 2005, the Nizhny Novgorod regional prosecutor's office launched a criminal investigation against Pravo-Zashchita for publishing those statements, which prosecutors consider to be calls for extremist action, the Moscow Times reported. The criminal case is being investigated under Article 280 of Russia's Penal Code, and Dmitriyevsky faces up to five years in prison if convicted. On January 20, FSB agents questioned Dmitriyevsky again, this time about the newspaper's sources of financing, how he obtained the two statements, and who authorized their publication, according to local press reports. Later that day, four FSB agents raided the office of the RCFS without a search warrant, seizing registration documents, back issues, and work contracts for RCFS staffers in Nizhny Novgorod and Chechnya, according to local press reports. Oksana Chelysheva, editor at the RCFS's Information Center, told CPJ that FSB agents questioned the eight other RCFS employees based in Nizhny Novgorod in the weeks after Dmitriyevsky was questioned. © 2005 Committee to Protect Journalists. http://www.cpj.org E-mail: info@cpj.org PRESS-RELEASE #1209 FROM MARCH 15, 2005 Threats to Oksana Chelysheva - Provocations in the Sinister Traditions of the KGB STATEMENT FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF OF THE RUSSIAN-CHECHEN FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY Yesterday in Nizhni Novgorod, in the neighborhood where Oksana Chelysheva, editor of the Information Center for the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, lives, flyers with dirty slander, insults, and personal threats directed at Chelysheva, where distributed in the mailboxes and posted on the entrance ways (the full text of the flyer in our press release #1208 from March 15, 2005). The flyer, which was signed by a certain “Young Patriotic Front”, also included the address where Chelysheva lives. Regarding this, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society deems it necessary to state that it considers the latest provocation, which follows completely in the sinister traditions of the KGB, to be the latest step in the persecution of our organization. The pressure is being brought by organs of the Russian state with the aim of destroying the organization. We have no doubt that there is only one goal behind the criminal case against the RCFS publication “Pravo-Zashchita”, investigated by the FSB, the audits of our organization by the tax inspector and the department of justice, a wave of slanderous news broadcasts and articles in the Nizhni Novgorod media, and, finally, the attempt to intimidate one of our editors. We also have no doubt that all these acts are directed from one center, where the specters of Dzerzhinsk, Beria, and Andropov loom large. And it is of no significance whether the leaflets with the threats against Chelysheva where printed at the local FSB building or if their half-brained author, hiding behind the name of an unknown organization, was only inspired by the Chekist-prosecutor's televised products, whose muddy stream has filled the Nizhni Novgorod TV stations. We emphasize that the source of this squalid attempt, whether indirectly or directly linked to the state, its propagandists, or the power structure, reeks of Chekism. It is indicative that the earlier attempts to destroy the organization have gained renewed strength at this very time when RCFS have begun the work of establishing a professional information agency, which specializes in covering human rights issues in Chechnya. The present power in the Kremlin is engaged in a battle with truth, a battle to the death. And in its effort to silence the supporters of peace it is ready to go very far. At the same time by resorting to such squalid and vulgar methods of pressure our opponents appear as hysterics. It is obvious that our organization's chosen strategy of openness and strict adherence to the law is making the secret agents furious. They prefer to operate in the dark, to hide behind non-existing “patriots”, and to appeal to the fears and primitive instincts of the masses. They are people, who in the words of Christ, “choose darkness over light, because they have done evil” (John 3:19-21). Editor in chief of IC RCFS Stanislav Dmitrievskiy The opinion of the author does not necessarily reflect the position of the organization Chechenpress Occupants have captured relatives of Dokku Umarov As it became known, occupants have captured and keep as hostages Umarov Ruslan Hamadovich (born in 1962), Umarov Zaurbek Lechaevich (the year of birth is unknown), and Ataev Roman Ibragimovich (born in 1967). Umarov Ruslan is a brother of the Chechen commander Dokku Umarov, was captured by occupants on the 24 th of February this year; Umarov Zaurbek, his cousin, was detained in 2003; and Ataev Roman, a relative of the Umarov's, was detained in Ingushetia on the 28 th of 2004, however to the inquiry of the relatives about his destiny there are answers, that he was “searched by the Federal Investigation since the 4 th of November of the same year, as a person, evading the investigation”. It is known about Ruslan Umarov that he is in the military base of occupants in Hankala, who subject him to the most severe tortures; the destiny of Zaurbek Umarov and Roman Ataev is unknown. Occupants carry out analogical detentions of the relatives of the Chechen politicians and militaries in order to force them to stop the struggle for a long time and in the greatest scales. It is enough to remind that in the beginning of December, 2004, occupants with hands of the national-traitors captured at once 8 relatives of President Aslan Mashadov (Shahid, insha Allah). This case, due to the efforts of the Russian and Western legal experts, became wide-known in the world mass media; however there was no influence from the “International Community” on the criminal Russian authority, and relatives of the Chechen President were not released even after his death. They were not released despite of the fact, that majority of them were old women and aged people, who had not taken any part in the Resistance. Thus, the only “factor of blame” of the people, taken hostages, subjected to tortures and killed in understanding of the Russian occupants consists in relations with those, who resists to the atrocities of the invaders against the peace population of the Chechen Republic. Realizing, that despite of informational isolation of the genocide in the Chechen Republic, some of such facts become wide-known, the Public Prosecutor of the Russian Federation Ustinov tried to give legitimacy to the practice of “taking hostages”. Because of the indignant reaction of the West the State Duma of the Russian Federation did not approve Ustinov's law on “counter-capture of hostages”, though the West does not disagree against the crimes of the Russian soldiery and special services, it only asks Russia to capture, to torture, and to kill Chechens without superfluous publicity. Otherwise it will be difficult for the West to support Putin so sincerely and magnanimously in his many-years destruction of the Chechen people. They understood everything correctly in the Kremlin, though with some efforts, but they stopped to over-emphasize before the western partners, what “effective methods” (like capture of hostages) they had found for “neutralization of the opponent”. Now the West is pleased: it is possible to wave away negligently from petitions, applications, and collective statements of legal experts about capture of hostages, practiced by the Russian soldiery in the Chechen Republic . Really: in fact the State Duma has not approved the law, offered by the Public Prosecutor Ustinov. And if there is no law in Russia, allowing taking hostages relatives of fighters of the Chechen Resistance, so there is nothing to discuss. If there is no law, allowing taking hostages, so there are no hostages. It is the same as with the moratorium against the death penalty: if Moscow has declared this moratorium, so there are no mass executions of Chechens without any court in Russian torture-chambers. The position of the West is such. There is such a term: diminished responsibility. It is when a person having a hard mental disease builds up an unbreakable wall between himself and reality around him; he stops to react adequately to the reality. He lives in his world of illusions, apprehending only those steady marks of being, which suit his inverted perceiving, combine with his manias. The West has diminished responsibility. We can not make it understand us. If it had been possible, we would have received though any signal for hope from the West during all these 11 years. And the matter is not that Clinton is worse or better that Bush or Shredder is better or worse, than his predecessor. The matter is that the West, and not only the West, but the whole world (why, really, we are talking only about the West), has closed itself in a dense cocoon, weaved of lie, hypocrisy, and inversely perceived pragmatism. Because the diminished responsibility is not a pragmatism, but its antipode. The diminished responsibility is a mental disease. And whether we are mentally healthy looking for help in the madhouse? Adlan Beno, Chechenpress 17.03.05 13:37 GMT, Mar 16, 2005 Still no data on Maskhadov's missing relatives - rights activists MOSCOW. March 16 (Interfax) - Russian human rights activists have said there is still no information about what happened to seven relatives of late Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov who went missing in December 2004. "We still have no information regarding what happened to Maskhadov's seven relatives. The eighth relative who went missing, as it turned out, has been detained and is in the Nozhai-Yurt police detention center," head of the Memorial human rights center Oleg Orlov told Interfax. "Initially, law enforcement agencies denied that one of Maskhadov's relatives had been placed in detention. This could mean they did not make any efforts to search for him and did not even check the places where convicts are legally held," Orlov said. According to human rights campaigners'data, eight of Aslan Maskhadov's relatives were detained in Chechnya over the period of December 3-28, 2004, including Maskhadov's sister, two brothers and a nephew. Chechen Prosecutor Vladimir Kravchenko said in mid-February that the disappearance of Maskhadov's relatives may be a planned provocative act. "At this stage, the investigation has several versions. This may have been a provocation by illegal armed groups, who were trying to attract attention and discredit the authorities," Kravchenko said. "Several versions are being looked into, including the possibility of federal forces being involved in the disappearance or the disappearance being an abduction for ransom," Kravchenko said. PRESS-RELEASE #1206 FROM MARCH 14, 2005 REPORT FROM THE CHECHEN REPUBLIK Sunzha district. An abduction of a resident of Sernovodsk On 12 March 2005 at 8.30 am a group of servicemen of an unidentified force agency seized Adan Askhabov (born 1984) from his own house situated on Noga Asuev Street in the settlement of Sernovodskaya of the Chechen Sunzha district and drove him away in an unknown direction. They also stole two cars belonging to the Askhabovs: a “Zhiguli” of the 7th model and an “UAZ” (“tabletka”) mini-van. On 12 March Khazik Kalimaevich Elikhanov (born 1983) was seized under similar circumstances. He was released the same day. According to Elikhanov, the abductors didn't beat him. Two residents of Assinovskaya settlement are detained on suspicion of illegal possession of firearms. It has been eight days since several residents of Assinovskaya settlement of the Chechen Sunzha district saw their relatives last time. On March 8 2005, representatives of some force agencies detained two residents of Assinovskaya settlement, Arsen (Isa) Maksheripovich Ilaev (born 1982) and his friend Akhmed Adamovich Khamzaev (born 1982), on suspicion of illegal possession of firearms. According to the relatives of the detained people, on 8 March 2005 at about 2 pm these two young people were in the street not far from Isa Ilaev's house that is situated in 50th Anniversary of October Street. All of a sudden an “UAZ” (“tabletka”) mini-van with people in camouflage drove up to Ilaev's house. Isa Ilaev came up to the car and inquired what they wanted. One of the gunmen got out of the car and told Isa that they wanted to talk to him. They offered Isa to go to the police office with them. Ilaev agreed and asked them to allow him to enter his house in order to take his passport. His friend Akhmed Khamzaev went into the house together with Isa. Ilaev kept a self-made gun in the house. Fearing a possible search, Ilaev gave the gun to Khamzaev. Having taken the passport, Ilaev went to the police office together with the military. In an hour the same people came to Khamzaev's house situated at 85 Mezhdunarodnaya Street. They accused him of illegal possession of firearms and detained him. As of the present moment, there is no information about the whereabouts of Arsen Ilaev and Akhmed Khamzaev. (From our correspondent) PRESS-RELEASE #1207 FROM MARCH 14, 2005 REPORT FROM THE CHECHEN REPUBLIK Gudermes district. A former head of the district administration is detained in the village of Braguny On 14 March 2005 federal forces servicemen detained Shatdy Batdyev, the former head of the administration of the village of Braguny of the Chechen Gudermes district. He was detained in his own house situated at 19 Lenin Street. The military blocked up all the area of Lenin Street. Batdyev is married. He has three children. Yesterday on 13 March 2005 two of the former subordinates of Batdyev were also detained, the accountant Khedi and an administration clerk Petimat. Both women live on Gudermesskaya Street. (a freelance correspondent) Shali district. Police operations by address in Serzhen-Yurt On 12-13 March 2005 representatives of force agencies carried operations by address in the village of Serzhen-Yurt of the Chechen Shali district. Three local people were arbitrarily detained in them. They smashed up everything in the house of another local resident. On 12 March the military detained Timur Kharonovich Rashidov (born 1976) living on Aslambek Sheripov Street. The same day at about 3 am force agents burst into the house of Sultan Suleymanov that is also situated in Aslambek Sheripov Street. As there was nobody in the house at that time, they smashed up everything in it. On 13 March at 5 am a group of armed people in camouflage burst into the Baysaevs' house situated in Dagestanskaya Street and took away Ramzan Magomedovich Baysaev (born 1973). The same day the military detained Aslambek Zakaraev (born 1975) who lives in Rechnaya Street. (a freelance correspondent) |