GESELlSCHAFT FÜR BEDROHTE
VÖLKER INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR ENDANGERED PEOPLES - INTERNATIONAL PRESS
RELEASE Göttingen, 23.05.2003
Call for help from Chechnya: Another human rights activist shot dead by Russian
death squads
Chechen human rights activist and close partner of the Society for Endangered
Peoples (GfbV), Lipkan Basayeva, is in danger of her life. This news startled
the colleagues at the human rights organization on Friday in Göttingen. In
a telephone call last night with GfbV Europe consultant Sarah Reinke, Mrs. Basayeva
reported that Russian death squads shot dead human rights activist Zura Bitiyeva
and three of her family members on 21 May in the village of Kalinovskaya. "We
are all
standing in a queue. It's only a question of time until they'll kill us, too",
Lipkan Basayeva said on the phone. On the night of 1 December, 2002, the brave
human rights activist and mayor of Alhan-Kala, Malika Umasheva, was also cowardly
shot dead by death squads.
The GfbV urgently called on the German Chancellor to come to the defense of the
still living Chechen human rights activists like Lipkan Basayeva or holder of
the Swiss Human Rights Award, Zainap Gashayeva. "Invite these brave and admirable
women to the German Embassy, or send out the embassy employees to meet them. These
women are in urgent need of your protection, Herr Chancellor!", writes Tilman
Zülch, President of GfbV International. "Your close cooperation with the
initiator of this genocide, Vladimir Putin, has contributed to the dreadful fate
of the two murdered women."
Zura Bitiyeva had committed herself to peace in Chechnya since 1994. In January
2000, she was arrested and kept prisoner and tormented in the infamous "filtration
camp" at Chernokosovo. After her release and a long illness, she was again speaking
up for peace at meetings and demonstrations. She was a thorn in the side of the
Russian military; her house was searched again and again. Then her son was arrested.
Recently she had argued against the enforced referendum of 23 March in Chechnya.
Additional informations from Sarah Reinke at tel. +49 (0)551 499 06 28.
Tilman Zülch can also be reached at tel. +49 (0)151 153 09 888.
In the Chechen Cossack village of Kalinovskaya some people in masks killed
seven of its peaceful inhabitants
The mass murder of peaceful citizens was committed on the 21st of May at dawn
in the Cossack village of Kalinovskaya in the Naursky region of Chechnya.
As was reported to the Interfax information agency by the administration head
of this region Vladimir Nazarenko, some unknown people in masks broke into the
house Ramzan Iduyev, which is located on the Filatov Street, and they shot its
host, his wife Zura Betiyeva, brother of the wife Abubakar Betiyev and son of
Idris
Aduyev.
Several minutes later the same criminals on the Kooperativnaya Street entered
the house of Turpal Ismailov and shot him dead. One more Chechen - Aslambek Gadiyev
- they killed him on the Oktyabrskaya Street. In this Cossack village seven people
have perished. The motives of crime remain unknown.