STATEMENT
FROM THE INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
AND THE MEMORIAL HUMAN RIGHTS CENTER

Agenda Item 9
58th Session of the Commission on Human Rights

2 April, 2002

Thank you, Mr. Chairman,

I am speaking on behalf of the International League for Human Rights and the Memorial Society in Russia.

In the territory of the Russian Federation, in the Chechen Republic, military actions continue which have taken on the nature of a guerilla war. Civilian population suffers from the activities of both parties to the conflict.

Some of the Chechen fighters are involved in terrorizing the civilian population. They kill everyone who cooperates with the federal authorities.

Russian leadership suggests that the world community perceive the activities of Russian forces in Russia as a constituent part of the struggle against international terrorism. However, the world community must take into account that in response to the Chechen fighters' attacks Russian federal forces engage into acts of terror against the civilian population. This terror has many faces.

First, it is the demonstrative acts of retaliation against the population for sabotage caused by the Chechen fighters. Below is one example:

On January 8, 2002, a Russian soldier died in a mine explosion. His co-servicemen detained at random three inhabitants of the near-by villages of Starye Atagi and Novye Atagi. The detainees were tortured and then killed.

Second form of terror is the so-called "moping-up" or "cleansing" operations of local settlements accompanied by looting, beatings, insults and mass detentions.

Yet another form of terror is a "disappearance" of people after their detention by the military or police during "cleansing" operations, at check-points or in their own houses during night raids by federal forces.

Sometimes, local residents afterwards find the corpses of those disappeared persons with traces of torture.

Numerous such cases convince us of the existence of criminal organized groups within the federal forces functioning in the capacity of "death squads" in Chechnya.

No perpetrators of the crimes described above have been punished.

It should be acknowledged that in the past year the number of criminal cases initiated increased quite significantly. It still remains a small number, however, if compared with the over-all number of crimes against civilians. The investigation of the great majority of such cases is suspended. The number of cases fully investigated is only a small fraction of the total number of criminal cases.

The activities undertaken by the authorities in order to clamp down on crimes against civilians have been neither consistent nor sufficient.

Courts in the territory of Chechnya have not become a real human rights protection mechanism. They cannot consider grave criminal cases and are only entitled to take up claims for material damage in the amount not exceeding nine thousands rubles, which is approximately equivalent to 330 Euro.

The assertions of the Russian government about positive changes in the situation in Chechnya are directly aimed at misleading the international community.

We call on the Commission on Human Rights to take following measures: