Chechen leader says all refugees to return home by September

July 04, 2003


MOSCOW - All Chechen refugees from camps in neighboring Ingushetia will return home by September ahead of presidential elections in the province, Chechnya's Kremlin-appointed acting president said Friday.

"There will not be a single tent in Ingushetia in September," Akhmad Kadyrov told Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Kremlin meeting with Chechen leaders.

Kadyrov said Chechens now living in tents will move to newly built houses in Chechnya, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia has been at pains to encourage the tens of thousands of refugees living in camps in the neighboring region of Ingushetia to return home as part of broader efforts to show peace is returning to Chechnya.

But humanitarian organizations say the refugees don't want to return, fearing for their safety in the wartorn republic. Refugees and human rights organizations say officials have threatened to close refugee camps and are using intimidation and blackmail to convince people to return.

According to a February survey by Medicins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, 98 percent of the more than 3,200 families living in tent camps didn't want to return to Chechnya.

At the Kremlin meeting, Putin said he had given orders to the Emergency Situations Ministry to help refugees in Georgia return home as well in time for October presidential elections.

At the request of Chechen State Council chairman Khusien Isayev, Putin agreed that elections will be held in Chechnya on Oct. 5.

"Do everything to make sure the poll is as objective and democratic as possible," Putin told Isayev. "Every citizen should be able, without pressure, to express his opinion."

"I have said, and I repeat, we will accept any person chosen by the people," he added. The Kremlin has heralded the elections as a further step in the peace process that it insists is under way in Chechnya.

Meanwhile, prosecutors have opened an investigation into the death of a Chechen woman killed when a helicopter shelled her home, officials said Friday.

The 71-year-old woman was killed and another injured late Thursday when a rocket fired from a helicopter destroyed her home in the village of Avtury, an official in Chechnya's Moscow-backed civilian administration said on condition of anonymity.

The ITAR-Tass news agency reported the helicopter belonged to the Russian military, but it is still unclear if the rocket was fired intentionally.

Human rights groups have criticized the government for taking little interest in prosecuting federal troops for crimes committed in Chechnya.

Five servicemen were killed over the past 24 hours, the Chechen official said.

Two soldiers were killed in clashes with rebels, and another when his vehicle struck a land mine. A further two troops were killed in their barracks in a weapons accident, the official said.

Russian aviation bombed the Vedeno, Itum-Kale, Nozhai-Yurt and Shali districts and artillery shelled rebel positions around Chechnya. Military police shot dead two rebels at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the capital Grozny.

The Associated Press

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Comment: This is now the second time the Kremlin is trying to repatriate refugees against their will into a war torn and extremely dangerous zone and where deaths squads terrorizing civilians reign. Will it succeed? If the international community will not react, certainly yes. M.M.