From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24 (Original Message) Sent: 5/10/2007 2:45 PM
Chechnya Weekly - Volume VIII, Issue 19
May 10, 2007
IN THIS ISSUE:
* British Luminaries Denounce Human Rights Abuses in Chechnya
* Memorial Notes a Sharp Drop in Disappearances in Chechnya
* Chechen Government Calls for Abolition of ORB-2
* Briefs
* Military Intensifies Security Sweeps as Summer Fighting Season Approaches
By Andrei Smirnov
* A Profile of the Karachai Dzhamaat
By Mayrbek Vachagaev
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British Luminaries Denounce Human Rights Abuses in Chechnya
Britain’s Independent newspaper on May 7 published an open letter from more than 100 British political and cultural luminaries to Vladimir Putin, urging him to use his final year as Russian president “to act to end the war and to restore peace and justice in Chechnya.”
“Since 1999, hundreds of thousands of Chechens have been displaced and more than 100,000 killed - mostly civilians,” the letter read. “Disappearances, torture, rape, extra-judicial killings and the silencing of independent journalists and human rights defenders have been daily occurrences, both by Russian forces and the militia of the president there whom President Putin recently appointed, Ramzan Kadyrov. For the vast majority of the Chechen people, Kadyrov’s presidency is little more than a regime of fear and oppression, with no way out and no avenues to seek justice for the daily crimes against civilians.”
The letter noted that, in November 2006, the United Nations Committee Against Torture expressed grave concern over “reliable reports of unofficial places of detention in the North Caucasus and the allegations that those detained in such facilities face torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The open letter also mentioned that in March 2007, following a visit to Chechnya, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner on Human Rights deplored the continuing torture and lack of accountability (Chechnya Weekly, March 15). It also cited the January 2007 European Court of Human Rights ruling in favor of two brothers who had been held in secret detention and subjected to torture by Russian forces in 2000 - Adam and Arbi Chitaev. “Most of the secret detention facilities in Chechnya are now run by ‘Kadyrovtsy,’” the letters stated. “Civilians are regularly detained without charge or any official record and subjected to torture to obtain ‘confessions.’” The letter also noted that in January 2007, the Russian Supreme Court denied an appeal against the closure of the Nizhny Novgorod-based Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, which publicized such abuses (Chechnya Weekly, January 25).
The letter concluded: “Despite overwhelming evidence from human rights organizations about continuing war crimes in Chechnya and the silencing of human rights defenders and independent journalists, the international community has so far turned a blind eye and remained silent. It is part of our intention to bring the horrific situation in Chechnya to wider public attention, and exhort President Putin to take whatever action he can to restore peace and the rule of law in Chechnya. Today, the very essence of our humanity is at stake in Chechnya.”
The letter’s signatories included Malcolm Rifkind, who served as Foreign Secretary under Prime Minister John Major; Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell; ex-Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy; Frank Judd, the Labor peer and former Rapporteur for Chechnya to the Political Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE); the playwright Tom Stoppard; novelists Melvyn Bragg and Ian McEwan; film and television director Ken Loach; and André Glucksmann, the French philosopher and writer. According to the Independent, the letter was initiated by the Chechnya Peace Forum, whose director, Ivar Amundsen, was a friend of the murdered Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
The Independent quoted Malcolm Rifkind as saying that while the West should recognize that the future of Chechnya is a “genuine internal problem” of Russia, “the methods, including the war itself and the denial of human rights, are appalling.” He said that while Putin has restored a “large measure” of self-respect and stability to Russia and presided over an economy benefiting from high oil and gas prices, “on the negative side, he has been moving towards a more authoritarian style of government.”
Rifkind told the Independent that Western governments have ignored human rights abuses in Chechnya. “Putin sought to use the U.S.-led war on terror as a reason why he expects the U.S. and the West to turn a blind eye to what he’s doing,” he said. “But it’s difficult to see the credibility in the claim that the Chechens are part of al-Qaeda. Even in the Cold War and in the days of the Soviet Union, it did not stop us [from] raising human rights issues with the Kremlin.”
Responding to the open letter, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov dismissed its claims about mass human rights violations in Chechnya, RIA Novosti reported on May 8. “Saying that there are currently mass violations of human rights in Chechnya is the same as saying that Big Ben stands not in London, but in the Chechen Republic’s mountainous Vedeno district,” Kadyrov told journalists in Grozny. According to the news agency, Kadyrov refused to comment on the letter’s contents, calling them “frivolous.”
Ismail Baikhanov, chairman of Chechnya’s election commission, said on May 8 the letter’s signatories should attend to violations of human rights in Iraq. “Any public attempt to protect civil rights is praiseworthy, but it is difficult to understand the logic of those who do not see what their soldiers are doing in Iraq, yet are trying to give advice to the leadership of another country,” Baikhanov told Interfax on May 8. “I, together with thousands of my co-citizens, do not understand why British public opinion and that of the European Union are not concerned by the fate of the Iraqi people or the fate of their soldiers, why they are silently watching the destruction of the state, of historic monuments. In Iraq, the blood of tens and hundreds of people is shed every day; women, old people and children are dying alongside soldiers of the coalition forces. In Chechnya, civil rights are being violated less that in any region of [Russia], and no more than in Western Europe.” Baikhanov added: “The calls to stop the war [in Chechnya] look ridiculous, because you cannot stop something that does not exist. They are too late.”
According to Interfax on May 8, Chechnya’s human rights ombudsman, Nurdi Nukhazhiev, said that the claims about the human rights situation in Chechnya made in the open letter to Putin were “baseless.” He urged British representatives to visit Chechnya to assess “peace and the rule of law” in the republic “with their own eyes” in order to avoid making “erroneous statements.”
Memorial Notes a Sharp Drop in Disappearances in Chechnya
Oleg Orlov, the chairman of the board of Memorial Human Rights Center, told Radio Ekho Moskvy on May 7 that the number of disappearances in Chechnya has dropped sharply. “In Chechnya in recent months some changes for the better have taken place: for the first time, a sharp drop in the number of abductions can be seen,” Kavkazky Uzel quoted Orlov as telling the radio station. “Hitherto, all reports of this kind were greatly exaggerated by the authorities, but this time, it is the case. We, at least, have noted it.” Orlov told Ekho Moskvy that the decrease in the number of abductions followed a “personal order” from Ramzan Kadyrov to the siloviki he controls to stop kidnapping people. “And they have stopped it,” Orlov said. “I don’t know whether it is temporary or for good.”
On May 8, Vremya novostei quoted Aleksandr Cherkasov of Memorial as confirming the drop in the number of kidnappings. He told the newspaper that 16 people were kidnapped in 2007 between January and March, ten of whom were subsequently freed. During the corresponding period last year, 53 people were kidnapped. At the same time, Cherkasov noted that Memorial is able to monitor only a quarter to a third of Chechnya’s territory, and that the figures sometimes change due to various circumstances. Still, Memorial recorded that in 2006 187 people were kidnapped, 94 of whom were freed, 11 were found murdered and 63 disappeared without a trace. While in January of this year just 10 people were kidnapped, in February only three were abducted and then three more in March. “In January, Ramzan Kadyrov gave a corresponding order to the republican formations that he controls,” Cherkasov told Vremya novostei, adding that the kidnappings now occurring are mainly being carried out by “siloviki who are not subordinated to Kadyrov – that is, federal soldiers, yamadaevtsy [the mainly Chechen fighters belonging to the Vostok battalion, which is commanded by Sulim Yamadaev and is part of the federal Defense Ministry’s 42nd Division], ORB-2.”
According to Memorial’s Oleg Orlov, on the flip side of the Kadyrov-mandated drop in the number of kidnappings is the emergence of a dictatorship in Chechnya. “On no account should one forget or close one’s eyes to what has been created in Chechnya as a result: a regime of absolute personal power has been created,” Orlov told Ekho Moskvy. The reconstruction taking place in the republic is being carried out according to “absolutely non-transparent financial schemes” and “massive purposeless spending of budgetary funds,” he added. “Everything is being built exclusively on Ramzan Kadyrov’s personal orders. In fact, this is a method slightly reminiscent of Stalin’s building projects.”
Chechen Government Calls for Abolition of ORB-2
Newsru.com and Kavkazky Uzel reported on May 4 that the heads of Chechnya’s law-enforcement bodies and security agencies asked Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov to initiate the abolition of ORB-2, the controversial operative-investigative unit of the Southern Federal District’s main Interior Ministry department that operates in Chechnya. The website reported that during a government meeting, the officials expressed concern that ORB-2 continues to torture people it has detained. A member of Chechnya’s parliament, Ibragim Khultygov told Kavkazky Uzel that “the situation involving the use of torture on the territory of the Chechen Republic is such that it could lead to a social explosion, the results of which are unpredictable.” Khultygov also said that “particularly many complaints” about torture have come from those who had been detained by ORB-2 at a facility in Grozny. “It is impossible to call” the activities of ORB-2 “anything other than criminal,” Khultygov said, adding by way of description that if an ORB-2 detainee does not sign a forced confession, “then ORB-2 members kidnap and torture his relatives” as a means of pressuring the detainee to confess.
The newspaper Vek noted on May 8 that in 1998, Khultygov became the head of the National Security Service of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI) under then Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. Novaya gazeta military affairs correspondent Vyacheslav Izmailov claimed last month that Khultygov, in his capacity as security chief in the Maskhadov government, was involved in the kidnapping of soldiers and civilians (Chechnya Weekly, April 5).
In any case, Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Adam Delimkhanov echoed Khultygov during the meeting of Chechnya’s law-enforcement and security chiefs, warning that “only through the efforts of the leadership of the republic will it be possible to avoid a wave of mass discontent on the part of the population over the use of torture and impermissible investigative methods.” For his part, Chechnya’s acting prosecutor Vladimir Chernyaev told the meeting that there were 270 complaints of torture of detainees in 2006 and that criminal cases have been launched in response to 11 of the 270 cases. Chernyaev said that before 2004, the majority of kidnappings in Chechnya took place during security operations, while today they are most often carried out by “criminal groups that are well armed, have uniforms, fake [official] identity cards, [and] occasionally are current members of law-enforcement bodies or power structures.” Chernyaev also said that since the start of the second military operation in Chechnya in 1999, the republican prosecutor’s office has opened 2,001 criminal cases involving the kidnappings of 2,795 people.
Chechnya’s human rights ombudsman, Nurdi Nukhazhiev, criticized both those guilty of using torture and the republican prosecutor’s office for “not taking appropriate measures in reaction to these facts,” Newsru.com reported. “An analysis of the responses, by the prosecutorial bodies to complaints from detainees about torture used against them, shows that all of the checks [carried out] by the prosecutor’s office are formal in nature, with their conclusions reached beforehand.”
Newsru.com reported on May 4 that in their meeting, the heads of Chechnya’s law-enforcement bodies and security agencies adopted a resolution calling on Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov to ask Federal Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev to abolish ORB-2.
On May 5, Kadyrov spoke out against the use of torture, Radio Ekho Moskvy and Newsru.com reported. “We must not resign ourselves to that,” he said in a meeting with members of Chechnya’s Public Chamber. “Regardless of which agency a unit belongs to, I do not permit anyone to harass people.” Kadyrov added that “today in Chechnya there are no gang formations, the heads of the illegal armed formations have been destroyed or are serving time, and therefore every person has the right to expect that nobody, regardless of their position, will be allowed to infringe upon his rights, not to mention encroach upon his freedom and life.” Kadyrov called on the Public Chamber members to “exercise civic control over the activities of the organs of power,” adding that “this will only be to the good.”
As Vek wrote on May 8: “Observers note that in spite of the ‘law-enforcement’ rhetoric, Ramzan Kadyrov, in demanding the abolition of ORB-2, is primarily concerned not about human rights, but about removing a large federal structure from the republic” (Chechnya Weekly, March 22, 29).
Briefs
- Police and Militants Killed in Shootouts
Four Chechen policemen and three rebel fighters were killed in two battles in the republic, Itar-Tass reported on May 7. One of the incidents took place in Chechnya’s Vedeno district, during a joint operation by members of Chechen Interior Ministry’s Kadyrov regiment, District Interior Ministry department, Federal Security Service and military commandant’s office against six militants belonging to the armed group headed by Supyan Abdulaev, aka Chitok. The militants were holed up in a house in the village of Khatuni. “During the shoot-out, two officers of the Chechen Interior Ministry’s Kadyrov regiment and a member of the Internal Troops died,” an Interior Ministry source told Itar-Tass. “Four other officers of the Interior Ministry were injured.” Three militants died in the shootout, the news agency reported. Meanwhile, a police officer was killed when members of the Kadyrov regiment attempted to arrest a 30 year-old resident of the village of Mesker-Yurt who has been on the federal wanted list for terrorism since 2003. The suspect, who eventually managed to escape, opened fire and wounded a police officer who died on the way to the hospital.
- France’s President-Elect Promises to Raise Chechnya with Putin
Just days before his victory in France’s presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy said that if he were elected president, he would bring up concerns about human rights abuses in Chechnya with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Associated Press on May 4 quoted Sarkozy as telling France’s Radio Europe-1: “Either we defend universal values of human rights, and that counts for the Chechens just as it counts for the French, or we don’t defend them. I know perfectly well that the Russian national sentiment has suffered painful challenges in recent years...but nonetheless, Russian democracy has progress to make.” Sarkozy added: “We have the right to say to a large country, ‘Listen, there are some things that are not going well.’ I would say it calmly, serenely, firmly.” The loser in the May 6 run-off presidential election, Socialist Segolene Royal, also strongly criticized Russia’s human rights record, including in Chechnya. As the Associated Press noted, human rights groups assailed outgoing French President Jacques Chirac for not taking Putin to task for alleged torture and other abuses in Chechnya committed by Russian forces and allied paramilitaries.
- Kadyrov Orders Chechnya’s Eateries to Close Early
Prague Watchdog reported on May 3 that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov ordered the closure of all cafes and restaurants after eight in the evening. Kadyrov announced the order during a meeting with Prime Minister Odes Baisultanov and First Deputy Prime Minister Adam Demilkhanov, arguing that evenings are the time when many drivers drink themselves into a critical state at such establishments and then get behind the wheel, thus posing a danger to those around them. In addition, Kadyrov said that many of these cafes often encourage debauchery, Prague Watchdog reported. Kadyrov compared drunk drivers to “Wahhabis,” stating: “What difference does it make at whose hands people are killed in the republic? The statistics tell us that more people actually die in road accidents than as a result of armed clashes.” According to Watchdog’s website, Kadyrov’s order that cafes and restaurants close by eight was precipitated by an incident that took place in the town of Argun when Kadyrov was traveling along a road with his entourage. “A passenger car shot out of a side-lane across the path of the presidential convoy,” Prague Watchdog reported. “It was fortunate that no accident occurred. The driver who had failed to give way to the motorcade was immediately detained and found to be very drunk.” The website gave no indication of what happened to the driver after he was detained.
Military Intensifies Security Sweeps as Summer Fighting Season Approaches
By Andrei Smirnov
Last March Nikolai Patrushev, the Chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB) visited the Chechen capital of Grozny, where he declared that al-Qaeda is still active in the North Caucasus. Patrushev named Dokka Umarov, the Chechen rebel leader, as the head of the Caucasian al-Qaeda. If one removes the propagandistic rhetoric from Patrushev’s speech about al-Qaeda, the message of the FSB chief becomes crystal clear: the insurgency is still able to resist and we should work harder against it. In Grozny, Patrushev met with officers of the Chechen branch of the FSB, the FSB Directorate for the Chechen Republic, and demanded from them “advance information on the intentions and plans of anti-Russian forces and terrorist structures aimed at destabilizing the situation in the region” (ITAR-TASS, March 15). To stress the importance of the task, Nikolai Patrushev made it clear at the meeting that this was not his personal demand, but the demand of the Commander-in-Chief, Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The Russian FSB reports directly to the Russian president and, proceeding from this, prime importance must be given to timely, complete and veracious information that contains conclusions predicting what is likely to happen and is required by the leadership of the country in order to take effective management decisions in the security field,” he said. Patrushev later admitted that the “total eradication of hotbeds of terrorism in the Chechen Republic has not been possible.”
During the opening ceremony of a new FSB building that took place in the Chechen capital on the same day, Nikolai Patrushev repeated that “in spite of the positive results of counterterrorist operations, hotbeds of terrorism in the republic have not been fully eradicated” and this is “yet to be accomplished.” Finally, the chief specified what the Russian authorities fear the most: that the insurgency will step up the war in the North Caucasus on the eve of the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections to be held in 2007-2008. Patrushev declared, during the ceremony, that “the level of terrorist threat remains fairly high, especially during significant sociopolitical events” (ITAR-TASS, March 15).
Following Patrushev’s visit to Chechnya, it became evident that the positive mood of the Russian officials regarding the region began to change. The attention, however, has been switched again to security issues. On March 26, President Putin met the Russian Defense and Interior Ministers in the Kremlin. At that meeting, Putin demanded that the Defense Minister complete the formation of two motorized rifle mountain brigades in the North Caucasus by December 1, 2007. At the same time, the Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev told the President that a training center to train soldiers to fight in the Chechen Mountains had been created in Kabardino-Balkaria. Nurgaliev promised Putin he would have 400 to 600 men prepared for the commandant’s offices located in Chechen mountain districts by the end of the month (newsru.com, March 26).
The following day, March 27, Nikolai Rogozhkin, the commander of the Russian Interior forces, declared that the situation in Chechnya had recently become more difficult and called for more active measures to be taken to stop the militants (Chechnya Weekly, April 12).
Starting in early April, a wave of security sweeps and arrests struck Chechnya and neighboring Ingushetia. According to the Chechen Human Rights Information Center, on April 3 Russian troops surrounded and swept the village of Yandi-Kotar in Achkhoi-Martan district. During this “mopping-up” operation the soldiers blocked all entrances to the village, busted all houses and checked the ID’s of the residents. At the same time, young men were detained for interrogations in the villages of Alkhan-Kala, Tangi-Chu, Roshni-Yurt, Chiri-Yurt, Zamai-Yurt, Stary Atagi and Samashki. It should be noted that all these settlements are located on the possible route used by the rebels to get from the mountains to Grozny. If the insurgents plan to unleash a guerilla war or attack the city, they will have to go through one of these villages. This could be one of the possible explanations for the special attention that security officials are giving these settlements.
Ingushetia also faced an unprecedented wave of security sweeps. On April 3, a large motorcade of special-task police units moved into the republic from North Ossetia. They swept Nasyr-Kort, on the outskirts of Nazran, the biggest Ingush city and a former regional capital. Then several young men and women were detained in Karabulak, Maglobek and other local towns and villages.
Late in April, Russian troops started to conduct large-scale “mopping-up” operations both in Ingushetia and Chechnya - operations similar to those taken in the first years of the second Chechen military campaign. On April 23, the troops completely surrounded the village of Shalazhi in Chechnya and the village of Voznesenskaya in Ingushetia. The soldiers dug trenchs and set up APC’s near the main entrances. On April 24, according to Ingushetia.ru web-site, Russian artillery shelled wooded areas near the Ingush villages of Ali-Yurt and Surkhakhi. Then, in early May, these settlements were blocked by the army troops for a security sweep that lasted several days.
Simultaneously, the Russian army’s reconnaissance units started to comb the outskirts of Grozny in Chechnya. According to Chechen human rights activists, on May 6 the troops blocked the city’s Staropromyslovsky district. Dozens of young men were detained and filmed on a video camera. On May 7, a large-scale “mopping-up” operation was held in Kotar-Yurt, which lies on the shortest path to Grozny from the mountains.
Nevertheless, security sweeps are just the tip of an iceberg. The Russian troops have yet to stop combing the woods and mountains and laying in ambush near villages in the Chechen foothills. The critical degree that the situation in Chechnya has reached is evidenced by the fact that policemen have banned the locals in the city of Argun for parking their cars on the streets.
In April, according to ITAR-TASS, air forces of the North Caucasian Military District conducted anti-terrorist exercises to practice bombing rebel camps and coordinating their actions with the ground troops. Increasingly, it seems that Russian authorities and the military command want to be ready for anything that could happen in the Russian South this year. As the summer fighting season approaches, more sweeps and anti-terrorist drills are imminent.
Andrei Smirnov is an independent journalist covering the North Caucasus. He is based in Russia.
