| Kavkaz Center Message from the Government and Parliament of the ChRI to the CoE and PACE [Translated by BBC Monitoring. BBC headline, introduction and clarifications omitted; passages omitted by BBC translated and added in brackets by me. N.S.] It will be six years soon as the second stage of the Russian-Chechen war has been continuing. This war which the Russian Federation started against the Chechen nation is the cruellest in the modern European history. The one-million-strong population of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria has sustained catastrophic losses as the world community has left it to be lacerated by butchers to please imperial ambitions of the Kremlin regime in exchange for economic cooperation. At least 25 per cent of the population has been killed since autumn 1994, including over 45,000 juveniles. About 90,000 people were abducted or went missing. Over half of the entire population have been subjected to physical and psychological violence in prisons, filtration and concentration camps. About 30 per cent of Chechen citizens have become refugees. There is no need to mention the republic's infrastructure which has been razed to the ground by Yeltsin's and Putin's terrorists. [To our great regret, the Russian-Chechen war is still continuing and taking mad turns every year. The number of new victims of the Kremlin's terror is growing daily among the declared freedom-loving Chechen people, which has been living since ancient times on its own plot of soil, given by the Supreme. The territory of the sovereign Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which is occupied by Russian bandit formations equipped with the most modern types of weapons and technologies, has become a zone of so far unprecedented lawlessness and exorbitant violence. In violation of all international obligations - assumed by Russia itself as a member of the Council of Europe - to observe human and national rights, Moscow is committing an ethno-genocide of the Chechen people. Massive seizure of hostages for political motives, with a majority of them later disappearing without trace, the so-called "cleansing operations", addressed searches, concentration camps, torture (including torture aimed at depriving males of their reproductive functions), executions without trial, removal of organs from hostages for transplantation or sale - all this has become an ordinary part of the reality in present-day Chechnya. A large number of secret mass graves are scattered around the territory under occupation by the Russian aggressors - victims of executions without trial of innocent victims in the Fascist torture chambers, committed by Putin's chastisers from the so-called "death squads". According to our reports, which are also confirmed by independent sources from many human rights organizations, more than 200 mass graves are found in Chechnya today. This has been partially acknowledged by Moscow's occupation regime in Chechnya as well. Elements of discrimination are also taking place against the Chechen refugees, that is by the authorities of the European countries. The notorious "Dublin Accord" has become one of the forms of cleansing operations against the Chechen refugees in Europe, when police officers armed to the teeth arrest families with small children and deport them to camps in Poland, where there are no conditions for the people to lead a normal life.] Against the background of this arbitrariness committed by Russia, which is a Council of Europe member state, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE] is demonstrating the amorality of fixed approaches of a number of international democratic institutions to the horrifying tragedy of the long-suffering Chechen nation which is on the verge of extinction. [The cynicism of the situation with regard to the latest attempts of the PACE to achieve a pseudo-solution of the Russian-Chechen war is especially significant. E.g., the farce of the "round table", organized by Swiss deputy Andreas Gross under the aegis of the PACE, was developed on the background of the barbarous murder of the legitimate president of the ChRI, Maskhadov, by Russian special services. And this crime of the century was committed after the leader of the Chechen nation had publicly declared a unilateral moratorium to military activities in the ChRI and called the Russian side to real political negotiations without preliminary conditions. Moreover, the leadership of the PACE did not find the time to issue a legal estimation of the terrorist act of the Kremlin against Aslan Maskhadov, completely ignoring the fundamental principle of the protection of basic human rights.] The Council of Europe and PACE ignore statements and appeals from the new Chechen president, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, who urges these European organizations to change their policy on Ichkeria as it makes the acceptance of the Russian-Chechen war dependent on cooperation with Russia in other spheres and to prioritize the Chechen issue. Proceeding from the abovesaid, the government and parliament of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria have great doubts about the prospects for further cooperation with the PACE. At least until the Council of Europe and PACE make specific steps to confirm their adherence to the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms on the basis of international law. In this regard, the government and parliament of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria suggest that the Council of Europe and PACE: 1. condemn the barbaric assassination of the legitimate president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Aslan Maskhadov, and demand that the Russian leadership hand his body over to his relatives for burial; 2. admit that the round table discussion organized by the so-called PACE rapporteur on Chechnya, Andreas Gross, was futile and erroneous; 3. condemn all-out attempts made by some PACE members under pressure from the Russian Federation to legitimize the inhumane, criminal, occupying puppet regime in Chechnya; 4. condemn amoral attempts by the Kremlin regime to foist on the Chechen people another political farce named "parliamentary elections" in Chechnya, as in the circumstances of continuing genocidal war there is no possibility of people expressing their will freely: that is a shameless mocking of democratic tools and a flagrant violation of democratic principles; 5. start an immediate implementation of the European parliament's recommendations to the Council of Europe mentioned in the resolution of 6 February 2004, especially those from paragraph 14; 6. intensify efforts to find a peaceful settlement to the military and political conflict between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria through real negotiations of the Russian and Chechen leadership to establish lasting peace in the North Caucasus; 7. condemn cases of human rights violation by the authorities in European countries regarding Chechen refugees and make for the repeal of the Dublin agreement which is an inhumane document running counter to democratic principles. [The Government and Parliament of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: Kavkaz-Tsentr news agency website, in Russian 20 Jun 05 BBC Mon ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Original in Russian: http://kavkaz.org.uk/russ/content/2005/06/20/35298.shtml |