Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2003

Refugees Sleep on Grozny Streets

By Yuri Bagrov

The Associated Press


VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia -- Some 200 Chechen refugees from tent camps in Ingushetia were forced to sleep on the streets of Grozny over the weekend, despite promises they would be given accommodation if they returned to Chechnya, the refugees said Monday.

Meanwhile, 226 refugees living in a tent camp near Karabulak in Ingushetia were given until Monday to pack up and leave because the camp is located on property owned by the Avtodor company, which wants to build an asphalt plant at the site, officials and refugees said.

The majority of the 200 refugees in Grozny found accommodation Sunday, but 32 remained without a roof over their heads, refugees said.

A temporary housing center for the returning refugees in Grozny is nearly completed, Interfax reported Monday.

The refugees at the tent camp near Karabulak were offered space in a neighboring part of the camp, housing 1,952 people, but they refused, said Akhmentkhan Pliyev, who heads the migration service in Ingushetia's Interior Ministry. They also were offered humanitarian aid for eight months, he said.

"I told the head of Avtodor that we will not force the refugees to move, but we can also not prevent Avtodor from doing this," Pliyev said.

Zulai Akhmadova, who lives in the tent camp with her husband and five children, complained that she paid 3,500 rubles ($115) for her tent and was reluctant to leave. "There is no place for us in Chechnya and it is scary," she said.

By Monday evening, however, the refugees were still in the camp and no bulldozers were visible.

Avtodor officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Humanitarian organizations say most refugees do not want to return to Chechnya for fear of their safety.

Refugees and human rights groups say officials are using intimidation, blackmail and other threats to persuade people to return. Russian officials deny the accusations.

Authorities have continuously pushed for the Chechen refugees in Ingushetia to return to Chechnya in an apparent attempt to show that life in the republic was normalizing.

Some 86,000 Chechen refugees are estimated to live in Ingushetia, about 18,000 of them in tent camps and the rest with relatives or in rented apartments.

In other Chechnya-related news, five servicemen were killed in fighting with separatist forces over the past 24 hours, an official in the Kremlin-backed Chechen administration said Monday.

Three soldiers were killed and seven injured during 14 separate rebel attacks on federal positions, the official said on condition of anonymity. In a separate clash near Meskety, two servicemen and two rebels were killed.

Federal aviation and artillery pounded several regions of Chechnya, and federal forces detained more than 130 suspects in sweeping raids.

Itar-Tass reported that an 8-year-old girl was injured by a grenade explosion in Grozny. The girl was hospitalized after a grenade exploded in an abandoned house where she was playing.