Message from Musa Sadulayev

I am with you

Tue, 12 Mar 2002 14:01:21

Hi, Nikolay!

For more than a month I was at home in Chechnya, first I was ill and then I was nursing my son who had influenza, so I had no opportunity to check up e-mail. Only yesterday, having received all mail for 3-4 weeks, in total more than 160 messages, I was surprised to learn that the radicals during this time had carried out so much work to attract attention to the genocide happening in Chechnya. I can't call in other way what the federal army does in my land. Because it isn't considered a crime to kidnap a peaceful civilian and then for a big sum to sell to his relatives his corpse with traces of violent death (having bragged beforehand in the Russian mass-media about one more killed field commander). As it isn't considered a crime to fire at peace houses from sub-machine guns, grenade discharger cups, mortars. Anyway, I'm not aware of any fact of punishment of a criminal for similar act. And there is a lot of facts when criminal proceedings aren't instituted for above mentioned crimes.

Also I was surprised to learn that our party comrade and colleague Olivier Dupuis had been fasting for more than 2 weeks to protest against the war in Chechnya and attracted thus to the Chechen problem the attention of many international politicians who after monstrous acts of terrorism of last September 11 preferred not to speak about my republic and thus untied the hands to the Kremlin. With great pleasure I'll join the initiative "Two days of the world hunger-strike for Chechnya". Not only me. My brothers Havazh (43 years), Rezaudi (42), Magomed (38) Sadulayev, and also my friends Aslan Zugayev (34), Mamed Khazhmuradov (34) and Selima Gapayeva (29). Though only our familiars and neighbours will know about our action, we consider it our duty to join the mass two-day hunger-strike from March 12 till March 14, against the war in our republic. It is a pity that I learned about this action only in the evening on March 11. I'm sure that there could be much more people wishing to take part in it.

Since the end of 1994, a genocide has been carried out against all inhabitants of Chechnya, the leaders of Russia call it an antiterrorist operation. It isn't known the exact death-roll and the number of disappeared among the peace population during this period. Official figures of the lost Russian militarians cause doubts. But even official figures frighten. It's more than three thousand death notifications in Russian houses during the last military campaign. There are more than 10 thousand mutilated and wounded. But the tears of victims of these two wars don't reach the Kremlin leaders, and they lack courage to repent of their sins and to stop a senseless war. But if all of us who take a sober look at what is happening, don't say "no" to the war - there won't be an end.

The people of Chechnya is tired of what is happening. Federal forces every day carry out the so-called sweeping-ups throughout Chechnya, accompanied by beatings, tortures, murders and plundering of peaceful population. Especially it happens in mountain and foothill regions of Chechnya. It's villages Alleroy, Tsotsan-Yurt, Kurchaloy, Stariye Atagi, Noviye Atagi, Chechen-Aul, Urus-Martan, Assinovskaya, Sernovodskaya, Samashki, Achkhoy-Martan, Argun, Shali, Vedeno... Speaking about all these evil deeds, the representatives of the command of federal army say that everything occurs within the framework of the Russian law. I'm not a lawyer, nevertheless I know that there is no law in the world allowing to taunt the arrested person, to torture with electro-shock, to cut off ears from alive person, to hold a person waist-deep in ice water (in order that he have no posterity - as militarians themselves said), to organize lynching and to hide carefully the traces of their actions.

In Grozny and in other settlements of Chechnya there is a lot of places where presumably the burial places are. But it's problematic and unsafe to carry out excavations and identification of bodies, because the militarians at once "find" in these places mines which are to be neutralized only by exploding them on the place, after that no corpses can be found there. Such fact took place last year in Oktyabrsky district of Grozny, near the military commandant's office.

And it would be a long story about what is happening on the Chechen roads, especially on the road from Rostov to Baku. But I'll tell a short story from my own experience. I had to spend 120 roubles in order to get from Sleptsovskaya (Ingushetia) to Assinovskaya (Chechnya) and back. The distance is no more than 20 kms. No soldier on my way would let me pass without having received "one tum" (ten roubles). Thousand people pass there every day. So it isn't surprising that having received a "tum", the soldier asked to change small coin for big notes which he got enough during the day. And these people officially enforce the order in our land, struggle with terrorism.

It is impossible to write shortly in one letter about everything happening in Chechnya. But in order that the events in our republic be not judged in the world by official propaganda of Mr. Yastrzhembsky, by the statements of Mr. Rogozin-headed Russian delegation in the PACE, and many mass-media controlled by the Kremlin, all of us as far as possible must inform the public about the essence of the arbitrariness occurring in Chechnya. Only reminding to all the world that the war in Chechnya isn't the lesser grief than the explosions of September 11, we'll be able to compel somehow the contradictory parties to sit down to the negotiating table. Otherwise the bloodshed will never stop.

And in conclusion I'd like to express my gratitude to all those who grieves over my republic and my people. At the same time I earnestly ask Olivier Dupuis whom I respect so much, to stop his indefinite hunger-strike. You did much more than all the politicians together who speak much about human rights and at the same time indifferently look how every day innocent people are killed in Chechnya, thousands of people three years live in canvas tents in Ingushetia, they are ill with hepatitis, tuberculosis, other diseases and have no means for treatment, people for ever leave their historical native land, going abroad to rescue their children.

Sincerely yours, Musa Sadulayev, member of the TRP since 1995