Refugees being forced to leave Ingushetia?

The number of Chechen refugees returning to their homeland from Ingushetia has grown since the March referendum, though not dramatically, the Polit.ru website reported on April 22. The authorities have now changed tactics, and are compelling refugees to return by withholding food and other humanitarian aid. They simply "remove the names of displaced persons from
the data banks in the Migration Service's computer."

The website referred to a case of about 200 recent returnees from the "Bela" refugee camp, who are now housed in what used to be a dormitory for university students. A government spokesman said that the tents where they had lived in Ingushetia have already been dismantled.

Human rights activist Ruslan Badalov, however, told the website that such people are returning not because they believe claims that the situation in Chechnya has improved since the referendum, but because of rumors that the refugee camps in Ingushetia are being eliminated. They fear that they will be forced to return in any case by the end of May, he said.

Human costs of war mount

The Kadyrov administration's deputy prime minister for the security agencies, Movsar Khamidov, who had already confirmed the estimate in a leaked report that forty-nine unmarked mass graves have been found in Chechnya (see Chechnya Weekly, April 15), has now added another telling detail. Khamidov is quoted by Grozny correspondent Mainat Abdulaeva of Novaya gazeta in that newspaper's April 24 issue as admitting that "practically no efforts are underway to try to identify the bodies." He
said that the qualified experts and specialized equipment needed are not available.

Also according to Abdulaeva, another official of the Kadyrov administration, Minister of Health Shakhid Akhmadov, recently stated that more than 1,000 children have been crippled by military operations in Chechnya, and that more than 3,500 have been killed. Abdulaeva wrote that Akhmadov also estimated that nearly 300,000 Chechen children are now suffering from traumas, congenital pathologies and respiratory or cardiovascular illnesses caused by the war.

From CHECHNYA WEEKLY: News and analysis on the crisis in Chechnya 1 May 2003, Volume IV, Issue 15