mynameis
16-07-2009, 12:35 AM
From The Sunday Times
June 3, 2007
Chechnya: video evidence of torture
AT FIRST glance the grainy video seems to show a routine reprimand being meted out by the security forces of Ramzan Kadyrov, the 30-year-old president of Chechnya, to one of their men. But the scene soon turns sinister.
Standing to attention in front of three officers, the soldier suddenly jerks and screams as a powerful jolt of electricity is passed through some wires attached to his fingers.
Another shock follows. He twists in agony and hunches forward, crying out again and again as the punishment is repeated.
The soldier’s torture, carried out on the officers’ orders in front of a dozen comrades watching in silence, was recorded on a mobile phone in one of three videos obtained by The Sunday Times which seem to corroborate human rights campaigners’ allegations of growing abuse by Kadyrov’s forces.
The shock treatment was delivered in apparent retribution for the theft of some oil that the victim is accused of having sold illegally.
“We’ll show you what happens to those caught stealing oil,” yells the man administering the shocks. “We’re not going to kill you or let you live. We’ll keep you in this state for two months until you’re neither a man nor a woman.”
He then turns to the onlookers. “You watch and be warned of what happens to those caught stealing oil. I’ll either kill you or leave you like this,” he said.
The video and two others, featuring a man being beaten with a stick as he sits on a bed and a woman being kicked on the ground where she is lying tied to a flagpole, are believed to show forces controlled by Kadyrov, who was rewarded for his loyalty to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in April when he was made leader of war-torn Chechnya.
According to human rights campaigners, Kadyrov – a flamboyant former boxer who invited “Iron” Mike Tyson, the ex-world heavyweight champion, to watch a competition at his club two years ago – is presiding over a republic of fear. His militias have been accused of abducting, torturing and executing opponents with impunity.
The war launched by the Russians in 1999 is finally over, life is being slowly rebuilt and Kadyrov has launched an ambitious reconstruction programme, which has earned him praise even among his critics.
But opponents say that by backing Kadyrov, who keeps a lion and tiger as pets, Putin has left Chechnya at the mercy of a despot backed by thousands of heavily armed men who have been brutalised by years of war. Kadyrov, whose father, the former president, was killed three years ago, has vehemently denied claims that men loyal to him are to blame for crimes committed against suspected rebel Chechens.
Now that mobile phones with tiny video cameras have become common in Chechnya, the perpetrators of abuses often record them and use the footage to boast about their exploits to their fellow militia men. The videos are passed on to ordinary citizens in what human rights campaigners claim is a deliberate tactic to intimidate the population.
“It’s impossible to keep statistics, since many victims do not survive to tell of their ordeal, while others are too scared to talk once they are released,” said a leading rights campaigner.
“Abuse is commonplace. Once detained it’s normal for the accused to be severely beaten, tortured and given electric shocks. Life is better than it was during the war, but people still live in fear. I’ve no doubt that the videos are authentic, not least because I know some of the people in them.”
In the second video, a Chechen suspected of having links with the rebels is severely beaten during questioning by a burly man. The attacker’s black uniform, Chechen sources say, belongs to the security forces.
Viciously striking his prisoner with a rod on his legs, arms, hands, shoulders and ribs, the officer screams at the detainee, demanding to be told the whereabouts of a secret arms cache. Seated on the edge of a metal bed in what looks like an improvised cell, the victim howls in pain and tries in vain to shield himself from the blows. He begs his jailor to stop and denies any knowledge of a rebel arms depot.
In the short third clip, a Chechen woman who, locals say, was falsely accused of helping to kidnap a child, is blindfolded on the ground with her hands tied. Two men speaking Chechen are seen kicking her and hitting her with a rod. The men laugh as she moans.
“It used to be Russians against Chechens,” said a source in Grozny familiar with the videos. “Now it’s Chechens against Chechens. Kadyrov and his thugs are kings. They can get away with anything.”
Mobile-phone footage which showed Malika Soltayeva, a young pregnant Chechen woman, being abused by some of Kadyrov’s men was handed to his office a year ago. Then prime minister, Kadyrov vowed to investigate the incident, in which Soltayeva had her head shaved and was beaten, kicked and made to dance naked – a humiliation that was followed by a miscarriage.
Three members of the security forces were accused but charges were dropped after Soltayeva received threats, according to campaigners. The men, who faced up to six years in jail, were let off after apologising to her.
Asked about the latest footage last week, Kadyrov’s staff were dismissive. “I’ve seen similar videos,” said Lyoma Gudayev, a spokesman for the Chechen president. “They’re put out by the rebels and first impressions usually turn out to be misleading. It’s all part of an information war being waged against us.”
Republic of fear
The Kadyrovsty, as the president’s militias are known, have been accused of:
Running illegal detention centres where witnesses claim to have seen people scorched with blowtorches
Holding detainees without food or water in open-air pits
Kidnapping relatives of suspected rebels and holding them for ransom
Torturing and murdering people suspected of links with rebels
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1875671.ece
Russia: Stop Collective Punishment in Chechnya
Punitive House Burnings Against Families of Alleged Insurgents
July 2, 2009
The use of appalling and unlawful tactics by rebel fighters does not justify the use of similar tactics by the government forces fighting the insurgency.
Tanya Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Russia office
(Moscow) - Russian federal and Chechen authorities should immediately put a stop to home burnings and other collective punishment practices against families of alleged insurgents in Chechnya, and ensure meaningful accountability for perpetrators of human rights violations in the region, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 54-page report, "‘What Your Children Do Will Touch Upon You': Punitive House-Burning in Chechnya," documents a distinct pattern of house burnings by security forces to punish families for the alleged actions of their relatives.
"Russia has said its ‘counterterrorism operation' in Chechnya is over, but human rights violations there certainly aren't," said Tanya Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Russia office. "Burning down peoples' homes for the alleged sins of their families is a criminal tactic, and there is no reason why the government can't put a stop to it and hold the perpetrators accountable."
In 2008, high-level Chechen officials, including President Ramzan Kadyrov, made public statements stating that the families of insurgents should expect to be punished unless they convinced their relatives to surrender. Insurgents have also been using a variety of violent tactics, including house-burning, against members and supporters of the pro-Moscow Chechen authorities.
"The use of appalling and unlawful tactics by rebel fighters does not justify the use of similar tactics by the government forces fighting the insurgency," said Lokshina.
The Human Rights Watch report documents 13 of 26 known cases of punitive home burnings between June 2008 and June 2009 that can be attributed to Chechen law enforcement personnel in eight districts of Chechnya. The most recent known case took place on June 18. The Memorial Human Rights Center, a leading Russian human rights organization working in the North Caucasus, reported that at about 5 a.m. unidentified law enforcement servicemen burned two homes belonging to the elderly parents of an alleged insurgent in the village of Engel-Yurt, Gudermes district.
The punitive home burnings detailed in the Human Rights Watch report generally were carried out at night, with law enforcement personnel - often masked - arriving in several cars, breaking into the yard and forcing the residents out of their house. The attackers would prevent residents from approaching their home, treating them roughly and in some cases holding them at gunpoint. The assailants would then torch the houses methodically and unhurriedly and stay for up to an hour watching the fire spread, to make sure the residents or their neighbors did not try to put it out before the house was well ablaze.
The victims of house burnings were generally told in clear terms that complaining to the authorities would lead to further repercussions. Consequently, victims filed official complaints in only three of the cases known to Human Rights Watch. In another three cases, the victims agreed to have Memorial raise their cases with the authorities. At this writing not a single criminal case into the allegations of house burnings in Chechnya has been opened by the law enforcement authorities.
The Russian government has overwhelmingly failed to investigate and hold accountable perpetrators of human rights violations during a decade of war and counterinsurgency in Chechnya. One Chechen government official told Human Rights Watch that this failure has helped to create in Chechnya an acceptance of impunity as the norm.
"The unpunished assaults on human rights in Chechnya are a perversion of justice and should not be tolerated," said Lokshina. "The perpetrators need to be held accountable."
In more than 100 judgments to date, the European Court of Human Rights has found Russia responsible for serious human rights violations in Chechnya. Human Rights Watch called on the Russian government to ensure that the rulings in these cases are implemented effectively.
"Fully implementing the European Court's judgments is one of the best ways of ending impunity in Chechnya," said Lokshina. "In a climate of accountability, it's hard to imagine crimes like punitive home burnings taking place."
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/02/russia-stop-collective-punishment-chechnya
Russian activist found murdered
'The militias had much to fear from her,' says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
A prominent Russian human rights activist, Natalia Estemirova, has been found dead in the North Caucasus.
She was bundled into a van and abducted as she left her home in Chechnya on Wednesday morning, a colleague said. Her body was found in Ingushetia.
The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed "outrage" at the murder, and ordered a top-level investigation.
Ms Estemirova had been investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya for the independent Memorial group.
Memorial is one of Russia's best known rights groups, working to document Soviet-era abuses and those taking place more recently, especially in Chechnya.
In recent months, she had been gathering evidence of a campaign of house-burnings by government-backed militias.
Forcefully taken
Ms Estemirova, who was 50 according to Russian prosecutors, had worked in the past with the activists Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in 2006, and Stanislav Markelov, who was killed in January this year.
There is no shred of doubt that she was targeted due to her professional activity
Human Rights Watch
Obituary: Natalia Estemirova
In 2007 she was awarded the inaugural Anna Politkovskaya Prize, and had also received awards from the Swedish and European parliaments, Memorial said.
In a statement the group said she "was forcefully taken from her house into a car and shouted that she was being kidnapped" at about 0830 local time (0430 GMT).
Her body was found in woodland near Nazran, the main city in neighbouring Ingushetia, about nine hours later. She had bullet wounds to the head and chest.
'Terrible tragedy'
The New-York based human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Ms Estemirova had been working on "extremely sensitive" cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya.
"There is no shred of doubt that she was targeted due to her professional activity," said Tanya Lokshina, HRW's Russian researcher in Moscow.
Campaign group Amnesty International said her murder was a consequence of the impunity that has been allowed to persist by the Russian and Chechen authorities and an attempt to gag civil society in the country.
In a statement, Irene Khan, the organisation's head, described her as "a courageous and inspiring woman".
"Human rights violations in Russia, and especially in the North Caucasus, can no longer be ignored. And those who stand up for human rights need protection," she said.
"The terrible tragedy of the killing of Natalia Estemirova is a crime that should be denounced by the authorities and every effort must be made to bring those responsible to justice."
Rare justice
Ms Estemirova was engaged in very important and dangerous work, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow, investigating hundreds of cases of alleged kidnapping, torture and extra-judicial killings by Russian government troops or militias in Chechnya.
Memorial says it believes that government security services of some nature must be involved in her killing.
Our correspondent says no evidence of that has emerged so far, but that it was the government-sponsored militias that had most to fear from her work.
She is the most recent in a long line of human rights activists and lawyers to have been killed or attacked in Russia. The history of these sorts of cases over many years is that very rarely are their killers ever brought to justice, our correspondent says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8152351.stm
Chechen Rights Campaigner Is Killed
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/world/europe/16chechnya.html?ref=global-home
June 3, 2007
Chechnya: video evidence of torture
AT FIRST glance the grainy video seems to show a routine reprimand being meted out by the security forces of Ramzan Kadyrov, the 30-year-old president of Chechnya, to one of their men. But the scene soon turns sinister.
Standing to attention in front of three officers, the soldier suddenly jerks and screams as a powerful jolt of electricity is passed through some wires attached to his fingers.
Another shock follows. He twists in agony and hunches forward, crying out again and again as the punishment is repeated.
The soldier’s torture, carried out on the officers’ orders in front of a dozen comrades watching in silence, was recorded on a mobile phone in one of three videos obtained by The Sunday Times which seem to corroborate human rights campaigners’ allegations of growing abuse by Kadyrov’s forces.
The shock treatment was delivered in apparent retribution for the theft of some oil that the victim is accused of having sold illegally.
“We’ll show you what happens to those caught stealing oil,” yells the man administering the shocks. “We’re not going to kill you or let you live. We’ll keep you in this state for two months until you’re neither a man nor a woman.”
He then turns to the onlookers. “You watch and be warned of what happens to those caught stealing oil. I’ll either kill you or leave you like this,” he said.
The video and two others, featuring a man being beaten with a stick as he sits on a bed and a woman being kicked on the ground where she is lying tied to a flagpole, are believed to show forces controlled by Kadyrov, who was rewarded for his loyalty to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in April when he was made leader of war-torn Chechnya.
According to human rights campaigners, Kadyrov – a flamboyant former boxer who invited “Iron” Mike Tyson, the ex-world heavyweight champion, to watch a competition at his club two years ago – is presiding over a republic of fear. His militias have been accused of abducting, torturing and executing opponents with impunity.
The war launched by the Russians in 1999 is finally over, life is being slowly rebuilt and Kadyrov has launched an ambitious reconstruction programme, which has earned him praise even among his critics.
But opponents say that by backing Kadyrov, who keeps a lion and tiger as pets, Putin has left Chechnya at the mercy of a despot backed by thousands of heavily armed men who have been brutalised by years of war. Kadyrov, whose father, the former president, was killed three years ago, has vehemently denied claims that men loyal to him are to blame for crimes committed against suspected rebel Chechens.
Now that mobile phones with tiny video cameras have become common in Chechnya, the perpetrators of abuses often record them and use the footage to boast about their exploits to their fellow militia men. The videos are passed on to ordinary citizens in what human rights campaigners claim is a deliberate tactic to intimidate the population.
“It’s impossible to keep statistics, since many victims do not survive to tell of their ordeal, while others are too scared to talk once they are released,” said a leading rights campaigner.
“Abuse is commonplace. Once detained it’s normal for the accused to be severely beaten, tortured and given electric shocks. Life is better than it was during the war, but people still live in fear. I’ve no doubt that the videos are authentic, not least because I know some of the people in them.”
In the second video, a Chechen suspected of having links with the rebels is severely beaten during questioning by a burly man. The attacker’s black uniform, Chechen sources say, belongs to the security forces.
Viciously striking his prisoner with a rod on his legs, arms, hands, shoulders and ribs, the officer screams at the detainee, demanding to be told the whereabouts of a secret arms cache. Seated on the edge of a metal bed in what looks like an improvised cell, the victim howls in pain and tries in vain to shield himself from the blows. He begs his jailor to stop and denies any knowledge of a rebel arms depot.
In the short third clip, a Chechen woman who, locals say, was falsely accused of helping to kidnap a child, is blindfolded on the ground with her hands tied. Two men speaking Chechen are seen kicking her and hitting her with a rod. The men laugh as she moans.
“It used to be Russians against Chechens,” said a source in Grozny familiar with the videos. “Now it’s Chechens against Chechens. Kadyrov and his thugs are kings. They can get away with anything.”
Mobile-phone footage which showed Malika Soltayeva, a young pregnant Chechen woman, being abused by some of Kadyrov’s men was handed to his office a year ago. Then prime minister, Kadyrov vowed to investigate the incident, in which Soltayeva had her head shaved and was beaten, kicked and made to dance naked – a humiliation that was followed by a miscarriage.
Three members of the security forces were accused but charges were dropped after Soltayeva received threats, according to campaigners. The men, who faced up to six years in jail, were let off after apologising to her.
Asked about the latest footage last week, Kadyrov’s staff were dismissive. “I’ve seen similar videos,” said Lyoma Gudayev, a spokesman for the Chechen president. “They’re put out by the rebels and first impressions usually turn out to be misleading. It’s all part of an information war being waged against us.”
Republic of fear
The Kadyrovsty, as the president’s militias are known, have been accused of:
Running illegal detention centres where witnesses claim to have seen people scorched with blowtorches
Holding detainees without food or water in open-air pits
Kidnapping relatives of suspected rebels and holding them for ransom
Torturing and murdering people suspected of links with rebels
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1875671.ece
Russia: Stop Collective Punishment in Chechnya
Punitive House Burnings Against Families of Alleged Insurgents
July 2, 2009
The use of appalling and unlawful tactics by rebel fighters does not justify the use of similar tactics by the government forces fighting the insurgency.
Tanya Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Russia office
(Moscow) - Russian federal and Chechen authorities should immediately put a stop to home burnings and other collective punishment practices against families of alleged insurgents in Chechnya, and ensure meaningful accountability for perpetrators of human rights violations in the region, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 54-page report, "‘What Your Children Do Will Touch Upon You': Punitive House-Burning in Chechnya," documents a distinct pattern of house burnings by security forces to punish families for the alleged actions of their relatives.
"Russia has said its ‘counterterrorism operation' in Chechnya is over, but human rights violations there certainly aren't," said Tanya Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Russia office. "Burning down peoples' homes for the alleged sins of their families is a criminal tactic, and there is no reason why the government can't put a stop to it and hold the perpetrators accountable."
In 2008, high-level Chechen officials, including President Ramzan Kadyrov, made public statements stating that the families of insurgents should expect to be punished unless they convinced their relatives to surrender. Insurgents have also been using a variety of violent tactics, including house-burning, against members and supporters of the pro-Moscow Chechen authorities.
"The use of appalling and unlawful tactics by rebel fighters does not justify the use of similar tactics by the government forces fighting the insurgency," said Lokshina.
The Human Rights Watch report documents 13 of 26 known cases of punitive home burnings between June 2008 and June 2009 that can be attributed to Chechen law enforcement personnel in eight districts of Chechnya. The most recent known case took place on June 18. The Memorial Human Rights Center, a leading Russian human rights organization working in the North Caucasus, reported that at about 5 a.m. unidentified law enforcement servicemen burned two homes belonging to the elderly parents of an alleged insurgent in the village of Engel-Yurt, Gudermes district.
The punitive home burnings detailed in the Human Rights Watch report generally were carried out at night, with law enforcement personnel - often masked - arriving in several cars, breaking into the yard and forcing the residents out of their house. The attackers would prevent residents from approaching their home, treating them roughly and in some cases holding them at gunpoint. The assailants would then torch the houses methodically and unhurriedly and stay for up to an hour watching the fire spread, to make sure the residents or their neighbors did not try to put it out before the house was well ablaze.
The victims of house burnings were generally told in clear terms that complaining to the authorities would lead to further repercussions. Consequently, victims filed official complaints in only three of the cases known to Human Rights Watch. In another three cases, the victims agreed to have Memorial raise their cases with the authorities. At this writing not a single criminal case into the allegations of house burnings in Chechnya has been opened by the law enforcement authorities.
The Russian government has overwhelmingly failed to investigate and hold accountable perpetrators of human rights violations during a decade of war and counterinsurgency in Chechnya. One Chechen government official told Human Rights Watch that this failure has helped to create in Chechnya an acceptance of impunity as the norm.
"The unpunished assaults on human rights in Chechnya are a perversion of justice and should not be tolerated," said Lokshina. "The perpetrators need to be held accountable."
In more than 100 judgments to date, the European Court of Human Rights has found Russia responsible for serious human rights violations in Chechnya. Human Rights Watch called on the Russian government to ensure that the rulings in these cases are implemented effectively.
"Fully implementing the European Court's judgments is one of the best ways of ending impunity in Chechnya," said Lokshina. "In a climate of accountability, it's hard to imagine crimes like punitive home burnings taking place."
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/02/russia-stop-collective-punishment-chechnya
Russian activist found murdered
'The militias had much to fear from her,' says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
A prominent Russian human rights activist, Natalia Estemirova, has been found dead in the North Caucasus.
She was bundled into a van and abducted as she left her home in Chechnya on Wednesday morning, a colleague said. Her body was found in Ingushetia.
The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed "outrage" at the murder, and ordered a top-level investigation.
Ms Estemirova had been investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya for the independent Memorial group.
Memorial is one of Russia's best known rights groups, working to document Soviet-era abuses and those taking place more recently, especially in Chechnya.
In recent months, she had been gathering evidence of a campaign of house-burnings by government-backed militias.
Forcefully taken
Ms Estemirova, who was 50 according to Russian prosecutors, had worked in the past with the activists Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in 2006, and Stanislav Markelov, who was killed in January this year.
There is no shred of doubt that she was targeted due to her professional activity
Human Rights Watch
Obituary: Natalia Estemirova
In 2007 she was awarded the inaugural Anna Politkovskaya Prize, and had also received awards from the Swedish and European parliaments, Memorial said.
In a statement the group said she "was forcefully taken from her house into a car and shouted that she was being kidnapped" at about 0830 local time (0430 GMT).
Her body was found in woodland near Nazran, the main city in neighbouring Ingushetia, about nine hours later. She had bullet wounds to the head and chest.
'Terrible tragedy'
The New-York based human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Ms Estemirova had been working on "extremely sensitive" cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya.
"There is no shred of doubt that she was targeted due to her professional activity," said Tanya Lokshina, HRW's Russian researcher in Moscow.
Campaign group Amnesty International said her murder was a consequence of the impunity that has been allowed to persist by the Russian and Chechen authorities and an attempt to gag civil society in the country.
In a statement, Irene Khan, the organisation's head, described her as "a courageous and inspiring woman".
"Human rights violations in Russia, and especially in the North Caucasus, can no longer be ignored. And those who stand up for human rights need protection," she said.
"The terrible tragedy of the killing of Natalia Estemirova is a crime that should be denounced by the authorities and every effort must be made to bring those responsible to justice."
Rare justice
Ms Estemirova was engaged in very important and dangerous work, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow, investigating hundreds of cases of alleged kidnapping, torture and extra-judicial killings by Russian government troops or militias in Chechnya.
Memorial says it believes that government security services of some nature must be involved in her killing.
Our correspondent says no evidence of that has emerged so far, but that it was the government-sponsored militias that had most to fear from her work.
She is the most recent in a long line of human rights activists and lawyers to have been killed or attacked in Russia. The history of these sorts of cases over many years is that very rarely are their killers ever brought to justice, our correspondent says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8152351.stm
Chechen Rights Campaigner Is Killed
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/world/europe/16chechnya.html?ref=global-home