MOSCOW - Liberal Russian lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov was shot to death on Thursday
in Moscow, news reports and the legislator's wife said. Police also said preliminary
information indicated he was killed.
Yushenkov was one of the only a few of Duma Deputies who always criticized the
Kremlin policy on Chechnya. He also hired as his parlamentarian aide Grigory Pasko,
who was convited to 4 yrs in prison on cooked up evidence, and this could not
make Russian secret services happy for sure.
[MOSCOW. March 3, 2003] (Interfax) - Grigory
Pasko, a military journalist who was sentenced for spying and then released on
parole, on Monday became an aide to State Duma deputy and co-chairman of the Liberal
Russia party Sergei Yushenkov. In an interview with Interfax, Yushenkov said Pasko
would be responsible for drafting expert conclusions and bills on media,
environmental, military, and judicial reform. His first task will concern amendments
to the acting law "On State Secrets".]
excerpt from RFE/RL Feb.04, 2003
...Duma Deputy Sergei Yushenkov is co-head of the Liberal Russia party, which
helped organize the weekend [anti-war] rally. He said that not only society, but
also parliament, has failed to confront the issue of Chechnya, adding that the
conflict is unconstitutional because it was not sanctioned by the Duma, the lower
house of
parliament.
Yushenkov said that the only time the Duma tried to call the government to account
over Chechnya came during the first war in 1994, when legislators discussed a
resolution to press then-President Boris Yeltsin to introduce martial law in the
breakaway region. The attempt failed. "Both the Kremlin and deputies in the State
Duma were scared by their own audacity in demanding that authorities observe their
own constitution and laws," Yushenkov said.
Yushenkov said the antiwar movement will likely remain small for now, but he added
that he hopes it will gather force by spring.
Yushenkov, also expressed a common complaint about the Kremlin's plans to carry
out a referendum on a new Chechen constitution in March. The government says the
scheme, which allows Russian troops to vote but is likely to exclude thousands
of Chechen refugees, represents the only way forward for a political solution.
Critics say that only negotiations with rebels can work. Yushenkov said the referendum
"will not be able to reflect the real will of Chechnya's population and is not
likely to have any positive effect."
The legislator also criticized a recent draft resolution by the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the continent's most important human
rights watchdog. Yushenkov said the draft resolution should have asked Russia
to cancel, rather than postpone, the referendum.
The resolution finally passed by PACE was rather toothless. It expresses concern
about the lack of "necessary conditions" for a proper referendum but makes no
recommendations. This prompted the assembly's special envoy on Chechnya, Lord
Frank Judd, to threaten to resign if the referendum goes ahead as scheduled.
...In an interview published in "Inostranets" on 5 June, Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov
explained his failure to join the SPS by arguing that its leader Boris Nemtsov
has a variety of ideas with which he does not agree. Yushenkov said that Nemtsov's
plan for Chechnya, for example, is "fascist" and resembles "what the Third Reich
did. The only difference is that the Nazis didn't make public statements. They
just acted." Yushenkov said that Nemtsov's plans specifies that "the governor
of Chechnya should be anyone other than an ethnic Chechen. We have seen this kind
of thing already in the Soviet Union, when the authorities always appointed a
representative of the nonindigenous ethnic group as [Communist Party] second secretary."
Yushenkov said he favors negotiations with Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov but
does not believe that time is ripe for discussing Chechen sovereignty.