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HR news |
'Memorial' Human Rights Centre
International Federation of Human Rights
25th April 2001
Joint appeal to members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
Respected Ladies and Gentlemen!
As the next session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe opens in Strasbourg, the desperate inhabitants of the Chechen village of Alkhan-Yurt, despite the authorities' ban, are forced to conduct a mass protest action against the continuing violence and arbitrariness of the armed forces.
In January 2001 the Parliamentary Assembly of the council of Europe took a decision to lift the sanctions imposed by it on Russia, and to return voting rights to the Russian delegation. The main reason for this decision was the following: the Parliamentary Assembly intends to try to exert a genuine influence on the human rights situation in the Chechen Republic and does not wish to lose the remaining channels for such an influence.
In this way, to a significantly greater degree than previously, responsibility lies with you for:
- the continuing gross violation of human rights in Chechnya
- the blood and the violence
- the deceit of the official Russian propaganda
- the Russian courts' sabotage of the investigations into the crimes committed by armed forces against the civil population
- the lack of action of the Russian parliament
In their comments on the Parliamentary Assembly's January decision, Russian officials have declared that the countries of Europe have demonstrated a significantly improved understanding of Russia's position with reference to the conflict in Chechnya. Thus, for example, on the 29th April the leader of the Russian parliamentary delegation to PACE D. O. Rogozin declared that an important result of the January decision is that PACE has admitted the participation of forces of international terrorism in events in Chechnya. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, Rogozin noted that in the Political Commission and other PACE departments 'people have begun to say that Russia has received a blow in the form of Chechnya which another European country might not be able to cope with.'
During the January session of PACE, Memorial representatives held conversations with many deputies from a whole range of European countries. Virtually all the people we talked to assured us that PACE would not relax its scrutiny of events in Chechnya, and that the question of human rights violations would be discussed at all forthcoming sessions.
However, on the 16th March 2001, the Co - Chairman of the combined working group of the R.F. State Duma and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the Chechen Republic D. O. Rogozin declared that there was a very large probability that the question of the situation of Chechnya for the first time in one and a half years would not be discussed at the PACE sitting.
These expectations turned out to be true, and we are left at a loss as to PACE's attitude to the problem of mass human rights violations in Chechnya.
Meanwhile the officials of the RF do not show the least compunction in throwing wool over the eyes of the Council of Europe.
On the eve of the last (January) session of PACE, representatives of the General Public Procurator's office informed the Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs, in Moscow on an official visit in his capacity as Chairman of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, that seven members of the Russian army have been sentenced for crimes committed on the territory of the Chechen Republic against peaceful civilians. The leader of the Russian delegation D. O. Rogozin, evidently having received the information from the same source, circulated it during the January session of PACE.
However in March in answer to an inquiry, the same General Public Prosecutor's office informed R.F. State Duma Deputy S. A. Kovalev that sentences had been passed against not seven, but four Russian servicemen. It is important to emphasise that of these four one was punished by a 10% reduction of his wages for a year; another was given a conditional three-year prison sentence. Only two of the servicemen were given sentences involving a real deprivation of freedom.
Such is the accuracy and reliability of the information received by the various structures of the Council of Europe from the official structures of Russia.
The discovery at the end of February of the bodies of victims of summary executions near the main Russian army base in Chechnya was widely publicised. Many bodies showed signs of having been tortured. According to the official version, 51 bodies were found, 19 of which were identified. The unidentified bodies were quickly buried.
'Memorial' knows the names of 17 of those identified, including 4 women. They were all arrested outside of a battle situation, during cleansing operations and at blokposts (military checkpoints).
The bodies of the victims discovered near Khankala constitute irrefutable proof of the war crimes of the Federal forces. Burial sites have been discovered in Chechnya before, and we wrote about these in our last appeal to PACE.
In this case it is worth underlining that nine of those people whose bodies were discovered were arrested at blokposts or were taken out of their homes by Federal servicemen in December 2000, that is exactly at the time when the PACE committees were discussing the question of the return of voting rights to the Russian delegation. Two people were arrested immediately before the discussion of this question in PACE - on the 17th and 20th January 2001.
At that time similar murders were being carried out in other Chechen regions. We will give only two examples.
On the 27th January 2001 in a quarry for the extraction of gravel from the settlement of Novye Atagi the corpses of two inhabitants of this village were discovered: Khamzam Khasarov and Akhmed Zaurbekov. They were arrested by servicemen during the 'cleansing operation' of this village on the 14th January 2001.
On the 12th February 2001 the bodies of three inhabitants of the village of Mairtup were found: Mukhaid Yusupov, Abubakar Uzaev, Buvaisar Ustanov, and a resident of the village of Bachi-Yurt, Ustan Akhiadov. These were arrested by Russian servicemen in the village of Iliskhan-Yurt on the 1st January 2001. All four corpses bore traces of torture.
Did summary executions cease after January 2001?
Unfortunately, we are forced to report that summary executions have neither ceased, nor has the level of violence declined. We offer just a few examples.
From 11th to 14th March 2001 a 'cleansing operation' was carried out by Federal forces in the town of Argun, during which over a period of several days around 170 people were arrested.
After the residents of the town, worried about the fate of those who had been arrested, gathered next to the town Commandant's Office, the Procurator of Chechnya arrived on the scene. Soon most of those arrested were freed. However twelve have disappeared without trace. Towards the end of March the bodies of four of them were found, and identified by relatives:
Muslim Umarovich Batsiev, born 1975
Ayub Bibulatovich Gairbekov, born 1978
Abdul-Malik Gazalievich Tavzarkhanov, born 1965
Ismail Musostovich Khutiev, born 1982
On the morning of 15th March 2001 near the Novogroznensky housing estate, rebels attacked a column of Federal forces, wounding nine servicemen. After this armoured vehicles deployed their guns and opened fire on the houses of the estate, and any cars which were on the road at that time. Several people received laceration wounds.
Then armoured cars from the column entered the village. The soldiers fired at everything which they saw in front of them: at houses, at cars, at people, at cows. Aslan Bisultanov, congenitally deaf and dumb, was the first victim, killed as he washed his car on the outskirts of the village.
An infantry armoured car entered the yard of the Magomaev's house. The servicemen killed the 19 year old Zalina Magomaeva, who was coming out of the door, with fire from the barrel of a grenade thrower. In a nearby house the servicemen killed A. Dulaev, the head of his family.
The Arsabiev brothers hid together with their wives and children in the cellar of their house. The servicemen dragged them out, beat them up, and then shot them with their small children watching. The pregnant wife of one of the brothers, who tried to persuade them to stop, was struck with the butt of an automatic weapon.
A 78 year old man was also killed.
In total eight people were killed and nine were wounded, including a three year old girl and a young woman.
About 20 houses were badly damaged, 6 cars were burnt and more than 10 cows were killed.
On the 28th March 2001 in the town of Argun four builders who were repairing Electric Power Station No. 4 were shot:
Movldi Khasanovich Israilov, born 1972
Tamirlan Akhyadovich Beguev, born 1978
Salman Sapinovich Arsangeriev, born 1977
Ibragim Zhobaevich Khanbiev, born 1968
At around midday, not far from where they were working, an armoured transporter was blown up by a mine on the road. Several of the workers immediately ran away, but these four remained where they were, thinking that it would be obvious to the soldiers that they were working and were not guilty of the explosion. But the servicemen, jumping down from the vehicle, ordered them to lie on the ground face down and mercilessly shot them.
On the 1st April 2001 at 3 a.m. a group of soldiers broke into the house of the Bitaev family in the village of Alkhan-Yurt. They seized Apti Bitaev, born 1970, who was asleep in his bed, beat him up, and drove away with him in an unknown direction. The wife of A. Bitaev, trying to defend her husband, was struck and wounded. At 2 p.m. on the same day the same servicemen came again to the house and threw in the naked corpse of Apti Bitaev. On his neck were bruises, his jawbone was broken, and there was no skin on his back, as if he had been dragged along.
On the 15th April 2001 in the Katayama housing estate in the Staropromyslovski district of Grozny local resident Shisa Musotov was arrested during a 'cleansing operation' by servicemen. A few days previously he had returned home from Ingushetia, where for a year and a half he had lived as a refugee. His parents spent two days looking for him in the detention centres. On the 17th April the body of Sh. Musotov was discovered in the yard of a kindergarten with two bullet wounds in his head.
This list could go on and on.
This is not the place to write about what we have already described in our previous letters to PACE: about the torturing, beating and looting - these are daily happenings in Chechnya.
In the PACE resolution of 25th January 2001 it was agreed that, 'The Assembly bears witness to certain reassuring, though limited circumstances', such as:
- the existence of state institutions in Chechnya, especially in the sphere of state administration, the justice system and the local police, with the growing involvement of the Chechen people in the operations of these structures;
- the reduction in the overall number of checkpoints and the increase in the number of checkpoints manned jointly by Russian servicemen and the Chechen militia;
- the withdraw of some forces from Chechnya;
- the limited access of Russian non-governmental organisations to the Chechen Republic;
- the accelerated rate of issue of identity documents.
As is becoming clear, the existing organs of power are not capable of defending people from violence and excess. The withdrawal of forces has become the next propaganda campaign. And all these measures are insignificant against the background of the continuing, constant and unpunished lawlessness.
The population of Chechnya is losing all faith in the capacity of the Federal forces to bring a halt to the illegal violence, and to punish within the framework of legal procedures those guilty of crimes. A new development this spring in Chechnya has been that desperate people have begun with increasing frequency to gather in peaceful mass protest actions.
Here are some examples:
After a large group of men from the village of Dzhalka was arrested with no legal foundation at the beginning of March 2001, the women of Dzhalka assembled on the railway line and brought all movement of trains to a halt. This was the only way in which they could bring about the release of most of the men who had been illegally arrested.
After the pogrom carried out by Russian servicemen on 15th March in the Novogroznensky housing estate (see above), several hundred women succeeded in stopping all traffic on the main road going through Chechnya. They remained there for three days with the slogans: 'NO MURDERS, CLEANSING OPERATION, LOOTING OR CAMPS!' and 'WHERE ARE YOU, LEADERS OF CHECHNYA, MUFTIS, AND JUDGES? FOR WE ARE KILLED WITH YOUR CONSENT!'
On the evening of 16th April 2001, in the town of Argun the central hospital building and the road leading to it came under fire for an hour from the roof of a nine- storey building where a Russian subdivision is positioned. As a result the hospital and the blocks of flats underwent considerable damage. Four patients were injured.
On the following day, 17th April, doctors in white coats marched from the hospital to the Argun to the Commandant's Office and then to the town administration.
After, on 17th April, personnel from one of the Russian enforcement structures killed three people and arrested a further three in the village Noybera in the Gubermesky region, the residents of the village, carrying the bodies of the three killed with them, gathered on the Rostov-Baku line and closed it down. Russian forces tried to disperse the protesters using firearms. They opened fire with automatic weapons above the crowd, which included women and children. But people did not disperse until the evening.
On 16th April 2001 Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the administration of the Chechen Republic, issued a decree outlawing meetings, congresses or any other actions involving the participation of large numbers of people. The decree will be valid until 'the period of anti-terrorist operations in Chechnya is complete, and the situation in the republic has been stabilised.' According to the news agency Interfax, this document was agreed with the Russian Federation's Presidential Envoy to the Southern Region. This does not prevent the decree from being unconstitutional and illegal.
Notwithstanding the prohibition, residents of the village Alkhan-Yurt began a protest action on 21st April 2001.
On 20th April Russian servicemen entered the village of Alkhan-Yurt. Concentrating on an area of high population density, they opened fire on the roofs of houses with automatic weapons and machine guns. Having broken into the building housing the middle school, where pupils were in the middle of their second lesson, they arrested students from the older classes. Arrests of young men also took place on the streets and at the local market.
In total in Alkhan-Yurt 25 people were seized, including 16 school children. The detainees were led away in an unknown direction. Towards the evening of that day after beatings and taunts, most of them were thrown into a field between the villages of Alkhan-Yurt and Goity. Three did not return home. Nothing is known about what happened to them.
On the following day - 21st April - the residents of Alkhan-Yurt blocked all roads going through the village and partially blocked the Rostov-Baku track. At the meeting the residents demanded an end to the arbitrary actions of the Russian servicemen. The protest action continued through 23rd April.
We called upon and continue to call upon the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe not to lessen its scrutiny of events in Chechnya, and not to succumb to the lies of the official propaganda.
For the duration of the whole armed conflict in Chechnya, international and Russian human rights organisations have demanded from International Government Organisations - including European ones - a tough and unambiguous assessment of events. We have demanded to put pressure on both sides of the conflict to observe human rights and the norms of humanitarian law.
In April of last year PACE assumed a principled stance in relation to the tragic events in the North Caucasus, and took a correspondingly tough resolution. However the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has refused to take any real steps leading to the improvement of the human rights situation in the armed conflict zone. Then, in January of this year, notwithstanding the fact that the majority of appeals, recommendations and demands contained in the resolution were not met by Russia, PACE greatly softened its position. To our deep disappointment, the only action taken thus far by PACE in relation to the tragic events in the Chechen Republic has been to create a working group on the Chechen Republic, jointly composed from the RF State Duma and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
We want to express our fear that the work of this group may be limited to isolated visits to Russia and meetings with Russian officials.
We welcome the fact that, further to the recommendations of PACE, the joint working group has produced a report with a detailed list of all the investigations carried out by the Prosecutor's Office into crimes committed against peaceful civilians by Russian servicemen.
However, we call upon the working group not to limit its activities to the compilation of statistical data, but to introduce measures to check the progress of detailed criminal investigations, paying most attention to the mass murder of peaceful citizens (Alkhan-Yurt, the Staropromyslovsky district in Grozny, Novye Aldy etc), and the disappearance and murder of those detained and arrested. We call upon the joint working group to address regular inquiries during the period between PACE sessions to the Russian Prosecutor's Office and to the Ministry of Internal Affairs regarding information on new crimes committed in Chechnya against the peaceful population.
