Pace Hamstrung in Consideration of Chechen Rights Complaints

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has been meeting in Strasbourg since January 21, and is scheduled to adopt a resolution on Russian human rights abuses in Chechnya. Some Russians fear the resolution will be too mild. "We have no hope for anything from the Council of Europe," said Oleg Orlov, the head of a Russian human rights group, Memorial, at a January 22 press conference. "The cases of disappearances and killings have become more frequent," Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying. "The situation in Chechnya is getting worse."

Orlov's comments reflect a frustration among Russian liberals with international institutions that fail to hold the Kremlin accountable for human rights abuses in Chechnya. On January 11, Russian servicemen killed six civilians - one of them a pregnant woman and mother of seven other children - on the outskirts of the village Dai in the Shatoi district. According to Memorial, Russia's leading human rights organization, these killings may have pushed Chechnya's calmest region to the boiling point. More immediately, they have stirred Russian rights advocates to step up their criticism of the Chechen campaign - a move that could overshadow the PACE meeting and darken Russia's role in the organization.

PACE suspended Russia's membership in protest of the Chechen campaign in the spring of 2000, but reinstated it the following year. This year few expect PACE to confront Russian officials about the growing number of abuses against Chechen civilians. In an open letter to Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, the leaders of Memorial reminded him that mass graves were discovered in Chechnya last year near the main Russian military base at Khankala. No one has been punished for those crimes and the abuses continue. "People arrested by federal forces continue to disappear. Their corpses are sometimes found, showing signs of torture," the letter said.

International human rights organizations have also taken note of the ongoing episodes in Chechnya. On December 30, 2001, the United States branch of Amnesty International issued an urgent petition for letters to Russian officials seeking the release of 10 named civilians and hundreds of others who "disappeared" after Russian soldiers took them into custody. "An Amnesty International representative has gathered first-hand accounts of villagers being tortured and killed during earlier raids on Tsotsin-Yurt," the online petition says, claiming that one victim's charred corpse turned up on January 7. The online petition claims 2,685 signatures as of January 24.

These eyewitness accounts are just about the only source of claims on human rights issues from Chechnya. Since the start of the war, the Kremlin has effectively barred foreign and most domestic journalists from covering the war by imposing severe restrictions on travel in the republic. Some foreign journalists have been refused visas. The few international humanitarian organizations that maintain a presence in Chechnya have also come under severe pressure. In December 2001, armed gunmen stormed the offices of the Danish Refugee Council and beat up the staff. (No Russian agency has acknowledged responsibility for the attack, but the newspaper
Kommersant quoted Russian general Sergey Babkin two days earlier, accusing the aid group of spying on rebels' behalf.) As a result, the scarce independent information about Chechnya comes by way of Russian and Chechen human rights activists. Not surprisingly, Russian military and security services are actively trying to suppress these voices.

But some use the internet to convey their often grisly stories. The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, based mainly around Nizhny Novogrod, claims that Russian soldiers attacked four of its activists between December 13 and 18, 2001. Luiza Betergiriyeva, a society employee, reportedly was killed when Russian servicemen opened fire on her car as she was leaving a checkpoint near the town of Argun. Her brother Akhmet Ezhiyev, a 64-year-old former Soviet official, spoke at the woman's funeral; five days later, according to eyewitness testimony carried on the Society's web page, he was shot by masked gunmen. Akhmet died in his house. His 75-year-old brother followed the attackers outside and reportedly sustained wounds when gunmen shot at his legs.

Another Ezhiev brother, Imran, has been arrested 17 times this year. During his most recent detention he was reportedly held for a month without access to legal or medical attention on trumped up charges of cattle theft from Kazakhstan. According to witnesses, on both occasions the victims identified themselves to the servicemen who killed them. Along with the organization's website, Moskovskiye Novosti and Le Monde carried stories describing these incidents.

Russian representatives have made countless promises to curb human rights abuses and bring perpetrators to justice. Yet these outrages continue unabated. It is highly doubtful that Russia will abide by whatever measures PACE adopts, unless stiff penalties are imposed for non-compliance. And such penalties themselves appear unlikely.