A wound in Europe

Göttingen
"They stuck needles and burning nails under my fingernails, tortured me with electric shocks, hung me up on the wire door, handcuffed by the hands and feet. My skin was cut with pieces of glass. They broke out my teeth and broke my ribs. They came twice or three times a day. With their boots they broke my toenails. I could not walk for days, not even after I had been bought free from the filtration camp” writes Ahmed Magomadov. The Chechnyan refugee is being cared for by the GfbV in Germany.

Some 200.000 persons have been killed in Chechnya since 1994 – about 20% of the small Caucasian people. 20.000 Russian soldiers have been killed, 80.000 wounded or crippled. Tens of thousands of Chechnyan children, old people, women and men have died in the bombing of civilian targets like villages, towns, hospitals, refugee convoys, schools, mosques and market-places. Thousands of young Chechnyans have been dragged through filtration camps and tortured, men and women raped, held in holes in the ground and mishandled. Almost 50% of the Chechnyan population has been driven out at least temporarily, while the elderly, the sick and the handicapped, pregnant women, small children and infants had only small chances of survival. For months death squads have been raging through Chechnya. In "cleansing operations” people are being dragged away, houses plundered and destroyed. In 2004 alone at least 1.700 people "disappeared”, i.e. four persons every day. The situation in this North Caucasian republic must be described as genocide.

Chechnya is cut off from the outside world and independent observers are not allowed to enter. Native human rights workers are to be silenced and at least 13 of them have been killed. This can only be explained by the silent consent of the western governments to what is happening in the North Caucasus. The Federal Republic of Germany cooperates with Russia at many levels, e.g. in the fields of secret service and army. There are no signs of any tangible efforts at a political solution. The political will necessary to stop the murdering in the Caucasus, which is now spreading to the neighbouring republics, does not appear to exist anywhere. The GfbV condemns with vehemence all terror attacks which are carried out in the name of the Chechnyans, but the cause of the terror is the continuing genocide in the North Caucasus.

Please join in an Email campaign which is aimed at improving the situation of about 200.000 Chechnyan displaced persons and 50.000 Chechnyans in Europe. Send the following Email message to the UNHCR High Commissioner Antonio Gutteres:

Mr Antonio Gutteres

UNHCR

Case Postale 2 500

CH-1211 Genève Dépot Suisse