From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 5/10/2006 3:02 PM
A Dove in Chechnya
A Dove in Chechnya
(television documentary)
It is only rarely that we are able to see images from Chechnya. Those we saw on Monday 8 May, on the Arte television channel, were terrible. Kidnapping, assassinations and torture continue, amidst widespread indifference, in this little republic in the Caucasus that is under Russian army occupation. One woman, Sainap Gachayeva, has created an association, called Echo of War, which has collected together photographs and videos of the atrocities perpetrated by the Russian troops. Perhaps one day, she thinks, these facts will be brought before an international tribunal.
Chechnya had one million inhabitants in 1994. Two wars later, maybe a fifth of the population has perished. Whole districts of the capital, Grozny, are still in ruins.
Many Chechens live in refugee camps set up in the neighbouring republics. They are scared to return to a ravaged country where a sort of perpetual latent warfare means that no one is able to feel safe. Every kind of trade is being carried on.
The Russian soldiers sell their arms to the rebels. They carry out kidnaps for ransom. One must pay even for the recovery of corpses that, often, are frightfully mutilated. A refugee relates: "One night, at three in the morning, there was a knock at the door. A voice in Russian demanded: `Open up!' They opened the door, and when my daughter-in-law came they killed her in front of her little boy."
The documentary, by the Swiss Erik Bergkraut, follows Sainap Gachayeva's steps to Moscow, where she lives, to Chechnya, which she often visits, and to the capitals of Europe where she tries to bring attention to the situation in her country. This woman of 52, known as "the Dove", says she is no longer afraid after seeing death close up many times. She was born in Kazakhstan, where Stalin had deported the entire Chechen population in 1944. She sends to foreign countries her video films showing the horrors of the war.
Her friend Zoura Bitieva, who had appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, was assassinated in 2003 by the Russian secret service. A father who had brought a complaint before the same institution, after the kidnap of his son, has disappeared. So Sainap Gachayeva knows the risks she takes.
In this endless war, in which the men are either killed or are in hiding, it is the women who remain. There are the "black widows" – the terrorists in veils that one saw during the hostage-taking in Moscow, and the suicide attacks. But also discernible are luminous figures like this "Dove".
by Dominique Dhombres
http://www.lemonde.fr/
Translated by Jeremy Putley
Kavkaz Center
2006-05-10 14:30:26
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/05/10/4665.shtml
