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UN/Sub-Commission on Human Rights: TRP statement on Chechnya
54th UN Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
Item 6: other human rights issues
On the situation in the Republic of Chechnya
Statement delivered by: Roustam Semeev, on behalf on the Transnational Radical Party
Geneva, 15 August 2002
Thank you, Mr.Chairman,
The Transnational Radical Party is deeply concerned about the continuous outrageous violence in the Chechen Republic.
For almost three years we have been witnessing the appalling Chechen tragedy that cannot be called other than genocide. The Chechens have lost more than 20 per cent of their population in these two wars.
The operations of cleansing, which qualify just one aspect of the current genocide, may occur in a village, in a period of two years, repeatedly, from 20 to 30 times. An other form of genocide is the creation of real concentration camps, better known as "filtration camps", where 10 to 100 people, captured after a cleansing operation in a village, are detained.
There are cases, however, that the people are let free after their documents are carefully checked, but they return disabled and most frequently after their relatives pay the negotiated amount of money. Nevertheless, in most cases the bodies of the detained are found later, other disappear without a trace. Sometimes, the bodies of those who did not survive tortures, are sold to the relatives.
Many of those sent to the filtration camps are still considered as missing. The activity of prosecution does not yield any results as no investigations are conducted.
Mr. Chairman,
Women, children and elderly people remain the principle victims in the Chechen Republic. 4.500 children have suffered from the military activities in the country between 1999 and 2002. 1.342 of them died on the spot; 1.936 died from consequences of wounds; 1.227 were very seriously injured.
The Chechens are dying in shell and bomb attacks, in combats and ‘cleansing operations’, from landmines and diseases. There are suspects of the use of some type of arms that are prohibited by the two Geneva Conventions, including chemical and biological weapons. Furthermore, there are fears about the existence of the use of human organs that are taken from the detained.
According to the official data of the Ministry of Health, in less then 10 years, over 30 per cent of population became Internal Displaced Persons, tubercolosis epidemy and hepatitis are being spread due to the lack of medical treatment.
But these are not all the sources of losses. The residents of the country describe it as a ‘demographic war’. During the so-called ‘cleansing operations’ young men of reproductive age are taken away and killed, thus attempting to resolve the question of the Chechen people’s gene pool. The violence is massive in the global scale with no analogies easy to find.
After the official statement about the end of the military activities of the ‘antiterrorist operation’, which is to be the definition of this war by the Russian authorities, in the Chechen Republic, the major problems faced by the civilians are rooted in the actions of federal forces, that is the actions of the Russian military in Chechen towns and settlements most of which are ruined and some are annihilated.
The bloody war in the Chechen Republic is successfully kept out of the eyesight of international information agencies. This apocalyptic region remains hermetically isolated for genuine journalists. They have been able to work in the country hitherto accompanied by the press agencies’ officials. Internal censorship is followed up by the strategy that depicts the war as a campaign on rooting out of the terrorists.
It is unbearably painful to watch the current silence about the Chechen Republic, which is one of the most tragic spots of the globe. We have no right to keep silent while each day in this part of the world is a day of violence; while the only law that rules in the Chechen Republic is a rule of violence and evil; while impunity encourages the military to more murders, crimes and trade of kidnapped people and dead bodies.
Mr. Chairman,
the Transnational Radical Party would also like to draw your attention to the humanitarian catastrophe in the Chechen refugee camps in the Ingushetia Republic, as well as to the issue of forced removal of the refugees from the camps where they have been staying since the beginning of the war in late 1999.
On July 26, the Prime Deputy of the Immigration Service of the Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Igor Yunash, announced that all of the Chechen refugee tent camps in Ingushetia would be closed down by the end of this year. The refugees are under pressure and many of them have already been forced to return in the Chechen Republic. Due to the total lack of safe conditions in the country itself, the pressure that the Chechen refugees are facing could be defined as a sort of new form of deportation.
As of today, the main UN programs in the North Caucasus are suspended temporarily after the kidnapping of the head of the non-governmental organizations, “Drujba”, Nina Davidovich on July 23, 2002, in the Chechen Republic. Suspension of the UN activities in the country, as well as the activities of other international organizations, benefits only those who are determined to continue the war and persecute the civilian population of that region.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the TRP would like to express its deep disappointment over the fact that the 54th session of the Commission on Human Rights did not succeed to adopt the resolution on the situation in Chechnya.
Therefor the TRP asks to this Sub-Commission to appeal to the Commission on Human Rights to use its influence for an immediate start of negotiations between the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, and the President of the Chechen Republic, Aslam Maskhadov.
The TRP also urges the newly appointed Hight Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Sergic Vieira de Mello, to call on the Russian authorities to obtain an invitation for an internationally staffed independent Commission to verify the violations of the International Humanitarian Law in the region.
I thank you, Mr.Chairman
Item 6: other human rights issues
On the situation in the Republic of Chechnya
Statement delivered by: Roustam Semeev, on behalf on the Transnational Radical Party
Geneva, 15 August 2002
Thank you, Mr.Chairman,
The Transnational Radical Party is deeply concerned about the continuous outrageous violence in the Chechen Republic.
For almost three years we have been witnessing the appalling Chechen tragedy that cannot be called other than genocide. The Chechens have lost more than 20 per cent of their population in these two wars.
The operations of cleansing, which qualify just one aspect of the current genocide, may occur in a village, in a period of two years, repeatedly, from 20 to 30 times. An other form of genocide is the creation of real concentration camps, better known as "filtration camps", where 10 to 100 people, captured after a cleansing operation in a village, are detained.
There are cases, however, that the people are let free after their documents are carefully checked, but they return disabled and most frequently after their relatives pay the negotiated amount of money. Nevertheless, in most cases the bodies of the detained are found later, other disappear without a trace. Sometimes, the bodies of those who did not survive tortures, are sold to the relatives.
Many of those sent to the filtration camps are still considered as missing. The activity of prosecution does not yield any results as no investigations are conducted.
Mr. Chairman,
Women, children and elderly people remain the principle victims in the Chechen Republic. 4.500 children have suffered from the military activities in the country between 1999 and 2002. 1.342 of them died on the spot; 1.936 died from consequences of wounds; 1.227 were very seriously injured.
The Chechens are dying in shell and bomb attacks, in combats and ‘cleansing operations’, from landmines and diseases. There are suspects of the use of some type of arms that are prohibited by the two Geneva Conventions, including chemical and biological weapons. Furthermore, there are fears about the existence of the use of human organs that are taken from the detained.
According to the official data of the Ministry of Health, in less then 10 years, over 30 per cent of population became Internal Displaced Persons, tubercolosis epidemy and hepatitis are being spread due to the lack of medical treatment.
But these are not all the sources of losses. The residents of the country describe it as a ‘demographic war’. During the so-called ‘cleansing operations’ young men of reproductive age are taken away and killed, thus attempting to resolve the question of the Chechen people’s gene pool. The violence is massive in the global scale with no analogies easy to find.
After the official statement about the end of the military activities of the ‘antiterrorist operation’, which is to be the definition of this war by the Russian authorities, in the Chechen Republic, the major problems faced by the civilians are rooted in the actions of federal forces, that is the actions of the Russian military in Chechen towns and settlements most of which are ruined and some are annihilated.
The bloody war in the Chechen Republic is successfully kept out of the eyesight of international information agencies. This apocalyptic region remains hermetically isolated for genuine journalists. They have been able to work in the country hitherto accompanied by the press agencies’ officials. Internal censorship is followed up by the strategy that depicts the war as a campaign on rooting out of the terrorists.
It is unbearably painful to watch the current silence about the Chechen Republic, which is one of the most tragic spots of the globe. We have no right to keep silent while each day in this part of the world is a day of violence; while the only law that rules in the Chechen Republic is a rule of violence and evil; while impunity encourages the military to more murders, crimes and trade of kidnapped people and dead bodies.
Mr. Chairman,
the Transnational Radical Party would also like to draw your attention to the humanitarian catastrophe in the Chechen refugee camps in the Ingushetia Republic, as well as to the issue of forced removal of the refugees from the camps where they have been staying since the beginning of the war in late 1999.
On July 26, the Prime Deputy of the Immigration Service of the Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Igor Yunash, announced that all of the Chechen refugee tent camps in Ingushetia would be closed down by the end of this year. The refugees are under pressure and many of them have already been forced to return in the Chechen Republic. Due to the total lack of safe conditions in the country itself, the pressure that the Chechen refugees are facing could be defined as a sort of new form of deportation.
As of today, the main UN programs in the North Caucasus are suspended temporarily after the kidnapping of the head of the non-governmental organizations, “Drujba”, Nina Davidovich on July 23, 2002, in the Chechen Republic. Suspension of the UN activities in the country, as well as the activities of other international organizations, benefits only those who are determined to continue the war and persecute the civilian population of that region.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the TRP would like to express its deep disappointment over the fact that the 54th session of the Commission on Human Rights did not succeed to adopt the resolution on the situation in Chechnya.
Therefor the TRP asks to this Sub-Commission to appeal to the Commission on Human Rights to use its influence for an immediate start of negotiations between the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, and the President of the Chechen Republic, Aslam Maskhadov.
The TRP also urges the newly appointed Hight Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Sergic Vieira de Mello, to call on the Russian authorities to obtain an invitation for an internationally staffed independent Commission to verify the violations of the International Humanitarian Law in the region.
I thank you, Mr.Chairman
