Итоговые документы Варшавской встречи НПО

South Africa 2001

World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance

The meeting of NGOs from Eastern and Central Europe
Warsaw, 15 –18 November 2000

Appeal by the Warsaw Meeting of NGOs
from Eastern and Central Europe
on the situation in the Chechen Republic

We, representatives of more than 110 NGOs from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR, express our deep indignation and concern with the situation in the Chechen Republic.

According to numerous reports by human rights organizations, the troops of the Russian Federation exercise:

murders and collective punishment of civil population;
tortures and cruel treatment of detainees, also in concentration camps that were set up contrary to the law (the so-called “filtration” centers);
arbitrary detentions, arrests, and hold-ups of civil population for ransom purposes;
looting and pillage in settlements, extortion at check-points;
indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civil settlements.

Effective mechanisms of legal and social protection are absent in the Chechen Republic. Direct threats to life have created the situation when hundreds of thousands of refugees are afraid to return to their homes, dragging on their wretched existence in the neighboring territories.

We believe that the Chechen Republic still witnesses mass outrageous violations of human rights and norms of international humanitarian law. The developments in the Chechen Republic can be described as genocide and crime against humanity.

The actions by the Russian Federation Government in the Chechen Republic are accompanied by a wide-scale campaign to incite hatred toward the Chechens. These actions cause mass persecutions and discrimination of the people of the Caucasian ethnic origin over the entire territory of Russia. The image of the Chechen people as an enemy is being inculcated in society.

We are convinced that the conflict in Chechnya should be resolved by peaceful means alone.

We call upon intergovernmental institutions, governments, and NGOs of the entire world to exert pressure on the Russian Federation in order to create effective mechanisms to ensure guarantees of life, rights, and freedoms of the people of Chechnya; to hold investigation into all war crimes; to allow free access to the territory of the Chechen Republic to international observers and independent mass media; and to stop the policy of racism pursued by the state.