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Society
for Threatened Peoples (GfbV)
Göttingen/Berlin, 18.09.2003 Assistance call from Ingushetia: Bella refugee camp isolated from the external world. (my tr.) The Bella refugee camp in Ingushetia with up to 1.186 fled civilians from Chechnya has been isolated by the external world on Wednesday. This disturbing news reached the society for threatened peoples (GfbV) in Goettingen on Thursday. The human rights organization appealed immediately and urgently to the German Federal Government to use its influence on the Russian government for the refugees and turn against their imminent expulsion. "Apparently the tent camp should be closed without public observation, in order to force back the people to Chechnya. Because during passport checks they were already massively pressured to leave Inguschetia", writes a letter of the GfbV. In Chechnya they are however in great danger for their life and health. According to data of the refugee committee of the UNHCR still 98,000 refugees from Chechnya are in Ingushetia, 17,000 of them live to time in large tent camps such as Bella. There 696 persons are accommodated according to data of the Ingush migration service. According to countings of refugees however 1186 live in Bella. "Even the intensive commitment of the UNHCR does not convince Moscow's puppet Achmed Kadyrow to refrain from trying by all force to withhold the outside signs of the war in Chechnya, the large refugee camps, by eliminating them", said the GfbV speaker for Europe, Sarah Reinke. The pro-Russian administrative chief of Chechnya and only candidate with a realistic outlook for election in the presidential elections in Chechnya on October 5th, 2003, already informed the press agency Interfax on August the 13th that the camps in Ingushetia should disappear by October 1. |