The hunting down of people in Chechnya continues – Germany should contribute to peace

On the occasion of the first official visit of Chancellor Angela Merkel to the Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) points to the continued war crimes in Chechnya. Since 1994 up to 180,000 people have died at the hands of the Russian army and special units and through bombing by the air force. In the opinion of the GfbV and other international human rights experts this constitutes genocide according to the United Nations convention for the prevention and sanction of genocide.

"The German government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel has happily modified its policy towards Russia and begun to address problems of civil rights and human rights”, said the GfbV General Secretary Tilman Zülch. The human rights organisation appeals to the Chancellor and to Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to contribute to achieving peace in Chechnya. The policies of the Schröder/Fischer government were marked by the fact that they made no serious attempt to criticise the continuing hunting down of people in Chechnya. The GfbV has constantly pointed out since 2000 that in that very year this last German government sent a delegation to the totally destroyed Chechnyan capital Grosny under the leadership of August Hanning, at a time when following the bombardment of the Russian air force countless corpses lay in the cellars.

The Chechnya expert Sarah Reinke reports that the horror in the small republic in the North Caucasus is still continuing. "Not a night passes without people being dragged from their houses, locked in the torture cellar and there mishandled and murdered. Nor are women and children safe from these abductions.” The GfbV knows of many cases of the abduction of relatives of supposed Chechnyan fighters. The expectation is that the fighters will thus be moved to give themselves up. It is precisely in the hills that the Russian air force attacks villages and forest areas.

Defenders of human rights, journalists and members of relief organisations are hindered in their work, threatened and arrested. At least 13 human rights workers have been killed since 2000. Persons also who turned to the European Court of Human Rights in Strassburg as a result of the continuing impunity for infringements of human rights in Chechnya are being persecuted and threatened. The humanitarian situation is catastrophic. Half of the newborn children are born sick. Mines, contaminated drinking water, high radioactivity and the lack of sanitary facilities contribute further to illness. As the following examples show, the first days of 2006 have also been marked by serious violations of human rights and terror against the Chechnyan civilian population:

12.01.2006: In a country full of mines a 14-year old boy is seriously wounded by the explosion of a mine in Grosny.

11.01.2006: Early in the morning a so-called cleansing is carried out by Russian security forces in a shelter for refugees.

10.01.2006: Residents find in their quarter of Grosny the corpse of a woman. It is supposedly that of Raisa Dchudaeva, who was said to have been abducted from the village of Katajama a few days before by security forces. The corpse is riddled with bullets.

06.01.2006: In a wood near the village of Kotar.Yurt residents find the corpse of the 50-year old Sultan Ustarchanov.He was abducted by a group of unknown persons in battle-dress. His corpse shows many knife wounds, from which he died.

03.01.2006:During the night masked members of the Russian security forces break their way into the house of the Tchakayev family in the village of Starye Atagi. The five or six assailants beat the old father and mother of the family in front of the children. They demanded of the family that they give them arms, they turned the household upside down and plundered valuables and money.

31.12.2005: Near the town of Gudermes the two girls Marcha Saburaeva and Aychat disappear.

31.12.2005: Three members of different security forces and two civilians die on New Year’s Eve in an exchange of fire between the fighting security forces. Eight passers-by are injured.

30.12.2005: The 20-year old Aslambek Dchambulatov loses a leg through stepping on a mine in the village of Prigorodnoye. Two other persons, a 20-year old and a five-year old child, are a few days later severely injured in a similar accident in the Suncha region.