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This guest post was written by Enough Project staffer Ledio Cakaj. Read more posts about Sudan at Enough’s blog, Enough Said. “Tell them about our suffering here,” said the Bishop… More»
Chechnya, Russia
Overview
The Museum issued a Genocide Watch for Chechnya in 2001. The Museum's concern in Chechnya stemmed from:
• Past persecution of Chechens as a people
• The demonization of Chechens as a group within Russian society
• The level of violence directed against Chechen civilians by Russian forces
A massive Russian military force entered Chechnya on September 30, 1999, supported by air and artillery. Russian officials claimed the "anti-terrorist operation" responded to an incursion by Chechen militias into the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan and to apartment bombings in Moscow and elsewhere that they blamed on Chechens. In the ensuing months, Chechnya was devastated, including the almost complete destruction of Grozny, the Chechen capital. Russian artillery and air indiscriminately pounded populated areas. Human rights organizations also documented several massacres of civilians by Russian units.
Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed Chechnya pacified by Spring 2000. But peace remained elusive for Chechen civilians, victims of a continuing war of attrition. They were plagued by abuses committed by Russian forces -- arbitrary arrest, extortion, torture, murder. Chechen civilians also suffered because for years there were no sustained efforts to rebuild basic social services, such as utilities or education. Chechen fighters also committed abuses against civilians, but neither on the same scale nor with the same intensity as Russian forces.
Current Situation
A Victory Against Justice in Chechnya
Following Natalya Estemirova’s murder in Grozny last July, the human rights group Memorial accused Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov of involvement in her death. Kadyrov subsequently sued Memorial Director Oleg Orlov for libel.
This week, a district court in Moscow awarded the suit to President Kadyrov and ordered Orlov to pay damages, as well as retract his statements. The court rejected arguments that Orlov’s accusations were justified “based on Mr. Kadyrov’s record of human rights violations and his well-known hostile relationship with Ms. Estemirova.” Orlov has promised to appeal the decision, applying to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.
Reinforcing Kadyrov’s stronghold grip on the region, the court’s decision has also emboldened the leader to make additional moves against his enemies. He now plans to file a libel suit against the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which had employed Anna Politkovskaya, a human rights activist who was murdered in 2006.
A Critical Voice on Human Rights Abuses Silenced
On the morning of July 15, 2009, Natalya Estemirova was abducted near her home in Grozny, Chechnya. As people on a nearby balcony heard her call for help, Estemirova was forced into a car. Her body was found a few hours later near a highway in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.
Estemirova was a prominent human rights worker who for a decade had documented abuses, kidnappings, and killings for the Russian human rights group Memorial. She was the recipient of the first annual Anna Politkovskaya award, created by Reach All Women in War in honor of the murdered Russian journalist who courageously covered Chechnya for years. The award recognizes women who are defending human rights in zones of war and conflict, often at great personal risk.
Like many who have exposed human rights abuses in Chechnya, Estemirova’s work met threats and condemnations from Chechen authorities. In March 2008, when Estemirova criticized a new law requiring Chechen women to wear head scarves, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov summoned her to a personal meeting and threatened her. Frightened by the experience, Estemirova went abroad for several months. Then she returned.
The tragedy of her death was compounded by the subsequent closure of Memorial’s office in Chechnya. Alexander Cherkasov, Memorial executive committee member, explained, “We have seen that the work Natasha was involved in, the work done by our colleagues in Chechnya — documenting crimes committed by representatives of the authorities — is fatally dangerous. We can’t put them at risk.” The Memorial office in Chechnya, which operated throughout the conflict, provided critical — and oftentimes the only — information about human rights abuses in the Russian republic.
Update: On Sunday, July 27, a suicide bomb killed six people outside a concert hall in Grozny as a crowd gathered for a performance. It was the second bombing in Grozny this month.
Since Estemirova’s death two weeks ago, Memorial has accused President Kadyrov of involvement in her murder; Mr. Kadyrov has announced that he is suing the human rights group for libel.
For more information about Natalya Estemirova, her work, and the situation in Chechnya, please visit:
Russia Announces End to 15 Year-Long Operations
On April 16, 2009, Russia formally announced an end to its 15 year-long anti-terrorism efforts in the Republic of Chechnya. This decision meant that military restrictions on the region would no longer be in effect and that up to 20,000 Russian soldiers would be withdrawn. The move also significantly increased the power of Chechnya’s President Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov has a militia that is loyal to him alone and has been accused of serious human rights abuses. He has significant personal power in Chechnya, where neither the parliament nor the judicial system operate with independence. His position has also been strengthened by the murders of seven of his rivals in separate assassinations stretching from Vienna to Dubai over the past six months. Mr. Kadyrov denied involvement.
The Price of Stability
In Chechnya’s capital Grozny, renovation has begun to erase the architectural scars of war and build a new seat of power for Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who has professed loyalty to Moscow. Having established a regime based on person allegiances and the ruthlessness of his personal paramilitary guard, Kadyrov has succeeded in increasing stability in the region, although the occurrence of human rights abuses remains high. For instance, President Kadyrov has embraced a program that forces frightened parents of rebels to appear on television and beg their sons to return home. Families of insurgents have been intimidated and their homes burned down in targeted arson attacks that have occurred with impunity in several districts or towns across Chechnya.
According to Human Rights Watch, in 31 separate rulings to date, the European Court of Human Rights has found Russia responsible for serious human rights violations in Chechnya, including torture, enforced disappearences, and extrajudicial executions. In mid-September, the court ruled that the Russian Army had indiscriminately shelled the village of Znamenskoye in 1999, killing at least five civilians.
Across the Caucuses, tensions are running high. In Ingushetia, Chechen-style raids, abductions, and disappearances have become commonplace as the Russian government attempts to eliminate a rebel presence there. In August 2008, a war erupted between Russian and Georgia over control of the disputed South Ossetia region in Georgia.
A Presidential Inauguration
On April 5, 2007, Ramzan Kadyrov, son of the assassinated former Chechen Prime Minister Akhmad Kadyrov and head of the most feared militia in Chechnya (known as the Kadyrovtsy) was inaugurated President of Chechnya. While he had been the main power broker in broker in Chechnya since his father’s death in 2004, by Chechen law he could not be president until he turned thirty. Now some four months after his 30th birthday he took the highest office in Chechnya.
The number of disappearances in Chechnya appears to be very slowly decreasing each year, according to the Russian human rights organization Memorial, but remain a significant problem. Additionally, there is systematic torture and ill treatment of detained people in Chechnya. Memorial’s monitoring shows that in the majority of cases, the Kadyrovtsy (the pro-Moscow forces under command of Kadyrov) are responsible for the abuses. There are also many abuses committed by personal of ORB, the Operative Department of the Federal Ministry of Interior. Often, the ORB forces detainees to confess that they are or were members of the resistance, leading to fabricated criminal charges and convictions. The Kadyrovtsy force detainees to join their groups or release them after torture. Civilians throughout Chechnya also face enormous difficulties in securing adequate housing and medical care.
Basayev Dies
Following the death of Aslan Maskhadov, former head of the Chechen separatist fighters, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev was declared leader of the separtist forces. His leadership lasted barely more than one year. He was killed in a gun battle with Russian and pro-Russian Chechen forces on June 17, 2006. Shortly thereafter, on July 9, 2006, Shamil Basayev, considered the master mind behind Chechen-led terrorist attacks on Russian civilian sites, was also killed in Ingushetia by a bomb, although who triggered the explosion remains a disputed question. The new head of the Chechen separatist armed movement is Doku Umarov.
For Chechen civilians, conditions have not fundamentally changed since the process of Chechenization began. There has been limited reconstruction, largely focused in the center of Grozny. Many civilians still suffer from lack of electricity and running water. Those who returned after internally displaced persons (IDP) camps closed in neighboring Ingushetia (2004) struggle with inadequate housing. Human rights abuses, committed in large degree by armed forces associated with the pro-Moscow leadership, including the Kadyrovtsy, are committed with impunity and arbitrariness. Disappearances, in particular, are so widespread and systematic as to constitute, according the Human Rights Watch, a crime against humanity. In May 2006, the International Helsinki Federation issued a report documenting unofficial places of detention in Chechnya, where it is believed that many of the disappeared are taken and tortured.
Chechenization
In spite of Russian government statements that Chechnya is normalizing, rampant human rights abuses, lack of accountability, and a failure to stabilize or reconstruct Chechnya remain urgent problems for Chechen civilians. As part of a process of Chechenization, placing responsibility for governance and security in Chechen hands, the Russian government conducted a constitutional referendum on March 23, 2003. The results of this election, which was largely decried as fraudulent and unfair, were to affirm Chechnya’s place within the Russian Federation and to set the stage for new presidential elections.
The presidential election occurred in September 2003, with the Russian appointed head of the Chechen government, Akhmad Kadyrov, winning. In the months that followed, the Russian government moved to close tent camps in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, where Chechen civilians who had been displaced by the war and violence had been sheltering. By June 2004, the camps had all closed and many Chechens were forced back into Chechnya, where there was inadequate housing and a precarious security situation.
President Kadyrov was assassinated in May 2004. The new president Alu Alkahov installed Kadyrov’s son Ramzan as first deputy prime minister. Ramzan Kadyrov is the head of the pro-government militia, called the Kadyrovsky, who have been accused of committing disappearances and other human rights violations throughout the republic. On March 8, 2005, the former president of Chechnya and leader of the so-called Chechen separatist movement, Aslan Maskhadov, was killed by Russian forces.
During the same period, Chechen rebels have continued fighting in Chechnya. Shamil Basayev, a leader of some rebel fighters, has also claimed responsbility for increasingly devastating terrorist attacks on Russian soil. Among the most dramatic and deadly was the storming of the Dubravka Theater in Moscow on October 23, 2002, where 736 people were taken hostage, approximately 120 died. Also, on September 1, 2004, a group, again associated with Basayev, took over 1,000 people — many of them children on their first day of school — hostage in a school in Beslan. At least 317 hostages died, including over 150 children.
Violence appears to be spreading across the Northern Caucasus. Armed groups have undertaken large-scale organized violence in the neighboring republics of Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria. It is unclear the extent to which these actions are coordinated with Chechen fighters.
On November 27, 2005, there will be another test of Chechenization, when elections will be held for the Chechen parliament.
