The Moscow Times

Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2003. Page 3

300 Observers at Chechen Vote

By Yevgenia Borisova
Staff Writer

The respected Moscow Helsinki human rights group said Tuesday that it will send more than 300 observers to Chechnya to prevent fraud at the Oct. 5 presidential election.

Award-winning journalist Anna Politkovskaya warned that dirty games were already going on and that some presidential candidates have received threats.

"There is forgery in elections in all Russian regions, and Chechnya is such a complex region that it would be naive to think everything will go all right there," Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva said at a news conference Tuesday.

"We believe that with our observers we will at least reduce the level of forgery so that a second round takes place," she said.

At least one observer will spend the full day at most of Chechnya's 420 polling stations, and a list of the participants will be ready in three weeks, she said.

The presidential human rights commission has given its blessing to the project, she said.

Moscow has invited international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the vote, but it remains unclear whether they will attend. OSCE observers typically travel between polling stations, spending about 30 minutes at each one.

Fourteen candidates have been registered to run in the election. To win in the first round, a candidate needs to get more than 50 percent of the vote.

The Kremlin's favored candidate, acting Chechen President Akhmat Kadyrov, was trailing in the most recent opinion poll released from the region. A Validata survey released at the end of June showed that 61 percent of respondents would not support him.

Allegations are mounting that Kadyrov is unfairly using his administrative resources to ensure his election, Politkovskaya, who covers Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta, told the same news conference.

Politkovskaya said that just Tuesday morning she received a call from representatives of two candidates who complained of procedural problems opening bank accounts for their election funds. According to election rules, candidates can open accounts in Grozny-based Grozselkhozbank and collect up to 30 million rubles.

Politkovskaya also said the two candidates said they were receiving threats from "Kadyrov's team."

"They are in a mad panic. They are terribly afraid," she said. "They told me they have to hide, that their telephones are tapped, that they have to use euphemisms in their conversations."

"They told me that they don't sleep in one place; they have to travel from one place to another. They get threats at the places where they spend nights."

Politkovskaya said local state television is only showing programs that paint Kadyrov in a good light. In one instance, she said, a program recently showed happy refugees from Ingushetia who had returned to Grozny to find nice apartments at a refugee center at 24 Chaikovskogo Ulitsa.

"But there is a different reality that was never reported," she said. "These people were moved to privatized apartments belonging to a garment factory. The apartment owners barricaded themselves inside. Hundreds of refugees spent the night in the street. The next day there were fights ... when people understood that they had been deceived."

She added: "Candidates are not running on a level playing field there. How can we talk about democratic elections in such a situation?"

Buvaisari Arsakhanov, deputy head of the Chechen elections committee, said Tuesday that he has received no complaints from the candidates.

"We had a meeting with all the candidates this morning," he said by telephone from Grozny. "No one said he had any problems. We heard no complaints."

Arsakhanov said the candidates, instead, asked for bodyguards and cellphones, which, he said, would be provided on Aug. 20 to those who collect enough signatures to run.

Politkovskaya said the Chechen elections committee is in Kadyrov's pocket and candidates would never consider complaining to it.

She said candidates could appeal to the Central Elections Commission, which has a delegation visiting the region, but they have no access to the officials.

Commission members "are guarded by security and are located in a guarded area. They cannot make their way to see them. One of the candidates said that to complain he would have to come to Moscow," she said.

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Rights groups to send observers to presidential vote in Chechnya

August 13, 2003 Posted: 10:57 Moscow time (06:57 GMT) 

MOSCOW - Russian human rights groups will send observers to monitor the October presidential election in Chechnya amid concerns the Kremlin-appointed regional chief will emerge the winner despite his lack of popularity, a leading activist said Tuesday.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, chairwoman of the respected Moscow Helsinki Group, said her rights group and others are gathering volunteers from across Russia to serve as observers during the Oct. 5 vote. She said the mission will operate under the aegis of President Vladimir Putin's human rights commission, whose head has given the plans a green light.

Putin and the Chechen administration of Akhmad Kadyrov, who was appointed by the Kremlin in 2000 to run the region, have portrayed the election as part of an effort to bring peace and stability to Chechnya after nearly a decade of war and chaos.

Critics say the goal of the vote is to legitimize the rule of Kadyrov, who rights groups say is deeply distrusted by most Chechens.

Alexeyeva told a news conference that in trips to Chechnya, "not one of the hundreds of people I spoke to said a single good word about Kadyrov." But she said that "despite the fact that most people are against Kadyrov being president, they feel practically doomed to the fact that he will be foisted upon them."

Alexeyeva said she fears Kadyrov could win the election through fraud, pressure from the authorities in Chechnya and ballots cast by Russian servicemen stationed in the region.

According to official figures, there are some 70,000 military personnel stationed in Chechnya, but rights groups say the true number is close to twice that.

Despite much higher official census figures, Alexeyeva said there are only about 200,000 voting-age civilians in Chechnya. Because of the military vote - widely believed to be subject to orders from commanders - Kadyrov can count on receiving at least 30 percent, even if no civilians vote for him, she said.

She and other activists said they believe what Russians call the "administrative resource" - the ability of those in power to use pressure, threats and bribes to affect election outcomes - will also play a large role.

"I am certain that there will be falsifications, the question is to what degree," Alexeyeva said.

The Kremlin says it is not backing any candidate in the vote, but Russia's main pro-Kremlin party has endorsed Kadyrov.

The Moscow Helsinki Group sent no observers to a constitutional referendum in March that cemented Chechnya's status as part of Russia, arguing that a fair vote cannot be held under conditions of war. But Alexeyeva said activists in Chechnya had appealed to the group to monitor the presidential election.

She said she hopes the mission will have 500 observers in Chechnya on election day, with monitors present at nearly all the region's 360 polling places.

Because of security concerns, the group will not invite foreigners to join the mission.

At least 10 people have registered as candidates in the election, which will come about four years after Russia sent troops into Chechnya for the second time in a decade in a bid to crush separatist rebels. Russian forces had withdrawn after a 1994-1996 war that left separatists in charge of the mostly Muslim region.

While large-scale battles are rare, fighting between Russian forces and rebels persist, as does violence against civilians.

Seven Russian servicemen were killed and eight wounded in rebel attacks, clashes and land mine blasts in the previous 24 hours, an official in the Moscow-backed administration said Tuesday on condition of anonymity. A Chechen police officer and a police employee were found dead near a village in southern Chechnya after being abducted, the official said.

The Associated Press

Comment: The idea that by "at least reducing the level of forgery" might change anything is an illusion and on the contrary might resolve itself in a boomerang for them. If the Moscow Helsinki Group will not find any irregularity (quite possible, its all irregular from the onset, there is no need to falsify the final voting session) it will be forced to recognize a farce. It is held in a war condition, where the candidate's life is under continuous threat, where there are no free independent media and political parties and where deaths squads terrorizing the population had already "convinced" them to vote in the "appropriate" manner. Putin does no longer need to organize any fraud during the voting session: he has already done everything necessary in this sense and now he might even receive the approval from an important human rights NGO. And he will no doubt use them to justify his genocidal policy. Russian authorities will use its name to pressure the Council of Europe (CoE) and the EU parliament to refrain from condemning the human rights violations in Chechnya. They will be used by Russian media to suggest that things are getting better while civilians "disappear in mass graves (this already happened with CoE itself). And with him, all our pious western leaders won't miss such occasion either, again clapping their hands and welcoming more than ever Putin's "absolutely right political process and political dialogue", because after all... the Moscow Helsinki Group said that!