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New evidence of
Russia’s continuing war-crimes in Chechnya
Mass-graves
containing bodies of civilians executed in the last
four months have been discovered near Russian military
bases in Chechnya by a Moscow-based human-rights group.
The group says that war-crimes are still being committed
in Chechnya 15 months after Russian troops reduced its
villages and cities to rubble in order to help Vladimir
Putin to become Boris Yeltsin’s successor. The group,
Memorial, which uncovered 48 bodies, took the precaution
of recording its grisly discovery on a video-tape, first
shown in early March, that leaves no doubt that the
Russians are still engaged in their genocidal programme.
Tatiana
Kasatkina, executive director of Memorial, said that
the bodies prove that Russian troops are guilty of commiting
new atrocities, giving the lie to Moscow’s claims that
‘Chechen terrorists’ committed murders. At least five
bodies were those of civilians, she said, adding that
of the 23 bodies she saw, "all had been shot in
the head with their hands tied behind their backs".
The bodies
were discovered in cellars, in tall grass and in the
streets of Dachny, a settlement of derelict and deserted
homes on the outskirts of Johar-Gala (Grozny), the Chechen
capital. Although the Russian military seized the area
15 months ago, these victims died long after: most of
them with the last four months, according to Kasatkina.
The Russians do not deny that they regularly detain
large numbers of Chechen men of fighting age, claiming
that their sole aim is to arrest the ‘separatist terrorists’
‘infiltrating the ranks of the innocent and peaceful
civilians’.
According
to a recent report by the New York-based Human Rights
Watch, many of those arrested are never seen again,
while others are freed only if their relatives hand
over the money or weapons demanded by Russian officers.
Soldiers frequently demand money even for the release
of bodies for burial. Kasatkina also confirms that money
changes hands before bodies are released to relatives.
According to her, some families received bodies of relatives
after finding them in Dachny and then paying Russian
soldiers.
Kasatkina
cited in particular the case of a Chechen father of
three who disappeared last December and whose body was
found by relatives in a basement in Dachny in February.
They paid $3,000: a lot of money for people made destitute
by unremitting war. "They gathered the money for
a day and a half", she said; "after they got
it and went to collect their body, there were two fresh
bodies in the same basement."
Memorial’s
revelations about mass-graves have caused great embarrassment
to the Russian leadership: they cannot easily be dismissed
as false allegations by Western groups antagonistic
to Russia, as Human Rights Watch’s recent report has
been, all the more because the revelations have coincided
with a report in Noraya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper,
describing an underground pit in southern Chechnya "with
ropes dangling from the edges" and "a bottom
too deep to see". Anna Politkovskaya, the newspaper’s
reporter who visited a Russian military camp in the
area, said that an officer had taken her to the pit
and told her: "This hole is for the militants".
It would
be naive to suggest that the Russian government is not
concerned at all about reports by foreign human-rights
groups and journalists on the war in Chechnya. Of course
it is. That explains why it ruthlessly prevents foreign
journalists and members of human-rights groups from
visiting the country. Those who succeed in making their
way in are taken hostage by Russian military personnel
who claim that the ‘Chechen terrorists’ are responsible
for their disappearance, only to release them later
for a hefty ransom. Almost 60 foreigners have been kidnapped
since the mid-1990s, and ransoms vary from $30,000 to
$300,000. This has had the effect of dissuading human-rights
groups and non-governmental organisations from sending
representatives into Chechnya. The Russian government
takes selected reporters on conducted tours, and they
do not meet Chechen fighters.
But the
system is not as watertight as it sounds, thanks to
the greed of Russian officers. Foreign journalists,
for instance, who want to meet and interview Chechen
fighters can do so by bribing Russian officers, the
current price being $1,000. Apparently no Russian officer
is above accepting such a bribe. Even members of the
SFB, the successor to the KGB, are not immune to temptation.
Such is the Russians’ greed that even the Chechen fighters
buy most of their weapons from them. This may also explain
in part why they are able to move easily throughout
Chechen towns, including Johar-Gala. The main explanation
for their mobility is, of course, that most of the population
support the struggle for independence.
The principal
reason that Moscow can live with hostile reports on
Chechnya by foreign human-rights groups and journalists,
but not with frank coverage by Russian groups and media,
is easy to see. Moscow knows that Western and Muslim
governments will continue to do business with it despite
the atrocities, while the Russian people (who supported
the second Chechen war when Putin unleashed it in October
1999) will take greater notice of local reports on the
fighting than of foreign coverage. As continued support
in Russia for the war depends on the popular belief
that an early victory for the Russian army in Chechnya
(without the loss of too many Russian lives) is possible,
any coverage that suggests otherwise is unwelcome in
the Kremlin.
In fact,
recent reports suggest that the war is far from over,
despite the destruction of almost the entire country,
and the death or displacement of hundreds of thousands
of people. Moscow also privately admits that it cannot
win the war, and that all it can hope for is to contain
the Chechen fighters. Moreover, lobby groups in Moscow,
such as the Russian Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers,
have begun to contradict the government’s figures for
Russian soldiers killed in action. For instance, the
government says that only 2,700 Russian soldiers have
died since the beginning of the second Chechen war,
while the committee insists that the true figure is
6,500. Indeed, the only explanation for the undiminished
attacks on the Chechen people detailed in recent reports
is the desperation and frustration of the Russian army
in Chechnya that they cannot defeat the much smaller
and more lightly-armed Chechens.
Few people
in the world have shown such courage and stamina as
the Chechens’. How long must they continue to be punished
for their determination to fight for their rights, even
in the face of the shameful silence of most Muslim governments?
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