Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Official Statement

02/06/2003

Europe' policy helps Puitn to go on with the genocide of the Chechen people

At a summit on Saturday, adding yet another page to Europe’s deplorable tolerance of Russia’ genocidal war in Chechnya, the European Union, instead of telling President Putin to launch genuine peace talks with the democratically elected Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, praised Russia’s faked referendum in Chechnya and supported her window-dressing amnesty, deceitfully calling them “sustained efforts towards a political settlement” of the conflict. This is clearly a hypocritical
misrepresentation of the reality in Chechnya, where the Russian authorities continue to torture and murder thousands of innocent Chechen civilians.

The European Union is well aware that there was no genuine referendum and that there can be no amnesty. The so-called referendum was in fact a crime against democracy, in which tens of thousands of Russian soldiers voted in place of hundreds of thousands of Chechens they had murdered, imprisoned and exiled, repeatedly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, which no government in the world can ever amnesty. Failure of the European Union to take credible steps with regards to the reality in Chechnya will bring about more Russian atrocities, which in turn will create more suicide-bombers. Clearly, this is a policy that
helps to prolong Putin’s dirty war in Chechnya and cover up the genocide. We therefore strongly condemn it.

The European Commission's president, Romano Prodi, told at the St Petersburg summit that the European Union and Russia were now “like vodka and caviar”. Europe must know that this “vodka” contains the blood of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Chechen civilians, mostly women and children whom Putin has subjected to the Nazi style terror and death squads.

Press Office