RFE/RL: Activist, Husband Found Dead in Chechnya
|
posted by circassiankama on August, 2009 as CHECHNYA
August 11, 2009
Rights Activist, Husband Found Dead In Chechnya
(RFE/RL) -- Two more human rights workers have been murdered in Chechnya.
Zarema
Sadulayeva, the head of a charity for victims of the Chechen wars, has
been found shot dead, along with her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov.
The murders come less than a month after another prominent Chechen rights activist, Natalya Estemirova, was killed.
Police
found the bodies of Sadulayeva and Dzhabrailov on August 11 in the
trunk of a car in a suburb of Grozny. Both had been shot dead after
being abducted from the office of their charity in the capital on
August 10.
Sadulayeva headed a Russian NGO, Save the
Generations, which provided medical and psychological help to young
victims of the fighting in Chechnya. Among those it helps are children
who lost limbs during the region's separatist struggle against Moscow.
Her
husband shared her work. They had married recently, after he had been
jailed for four years on charges of links to armed separatist groups.
Not Politically Active
Human
rights representatives who knew the two young people -- both were in
their mid-20s -- say they were not politically active.
“There
was no political element [to their work],” said Lyudmila Alekseyeva of
the Moscow Helsinki rights group. “They just helped disabled children
and children from poor families.”
The killings were condemned by
Human Rights Watch (HRW). The group's deputy chief in Moscow, Tatyana
Lokshina, called the murders "a horrendous crime."
The chief of
the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, said she holds Chechen
President Ramzan Kadyrov responsible for the murders since he is
obliged to provide safety for the republic's citizens.
The
killings come less than a month after the murder of one of Chechnya’s
most prominent rights activists, Natalya Estemirova, under similar
circumstances.
In both cases, the victims were bundled into cars by unidentified men, taken to remote locations, and shot to death.
The
killings underline the climate of fear that reigns in Chechnya, where a
Moscow-backed government is in power but there is no security against
unidentified armed groups, including those suspected of links to the
government itself.
"[The couple’s abductors] introduced
themselves as members of security forces," Aleksandr Cherkasov, a
leading member of the Russian human rights organization Memorial, told
RFE/RL's Russian Service. "When commenting on this kidnapping, Chechen
Interior Ministry officials said that according to their information
Sadulayeva and Dzhabrailov got in the car voluntarily. Were they
supposed to start shooting at five armed men who came after them?"
He adds that the pattern of abduction and killing has become commonplace in Chechnya in recent years.
"Thousands
of people, including absolutely innocent people, have been kidnapped
and killed in this fashion throughout the years of the second Chechen
war," he says.
Atmosphere Of Fear
The
Memorial group stopped its work in Chechnya after the killing of
Estemirova, who was the head of the organization’s branch there.
Rights activists blame Kadyrov for contributing to the atmosphere of fear that prevails in the republic.
His
strong-arm tactics, including reprisals against the families of
suspected separatist fighters, have helped to complete Moscow’s
rollback of rebel forces with the second Chechen war.
But his
intolerance of criticism, combined with an apparent disinterest in
solving the murders of critics, has opened him to charges of ordering
extrajudicial killings of opponents.
Chechen exiles have been
gunned down in foreign countries, some have been shot in Moscow, and
others killed in Chechnya. Virtually none of the assassination cases
have been solved.
Following Estemirova’s murder, Memorial’s
chairman Oleg Orlov charged the Chechen president with being
responsible, irrespective of who ordered the crime.
Kadyrov has denied any involvement. However, his derogatory remarks about Estemirova following her death have only added to the controversy over her murder.
No Immunity
In an interview with RFE/RL
on August 8, Kadyrov said Estemirova “never had any honor or sense of
shame” and “would say stupid things.” Estemirova had publicly accused
Kadyrov’s administration of rampant human rights abuses.
Sadulayeva
and Dzhabrailov were not prominent voices like Estemirova. Like most
people working in public positions, they did not risk speaking out on
public issues, whatever their private opinions might be.
But
this does not seem to have guaranteed them any kind of immunity in a
place where armed men kidnap in broad daylight without masks and yet
their identity is never learned.
Kheda Saratova, a Grozny-based
rights activist, told The Associated Press that three of the abductors
were clad in military fatigues and two others were wearing civilian
clothes. After taking Sadulayeva and her husband away, they returned to
their office to pick up her cell phone and seize Sadulayeva's car.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty © 2009 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.rferl.org/content/Charity_Head_Found_Dead_In_Chechnya/1796949.html
comments (0)
|
