RIGHTS-RUSSIA: Peace Descends, But Abuses Continue

By Kester Kenn Klomegah Reprint | | Print |

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Nov 30 2006 (IPS) - Three human rights organisations have said that abductions and torture are rampant in Chechnya despite the relative calm.

The organisations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Memorial, an independent Moscow-based group monitoring rights abuses, said torture in the republic is both systematic and widespread under Chechen President Alu Alkhanov’s administration.

The organisations said they have documented 115 torture cases from July 2004 to September 2006, most of which have not been investigated by law enforcement authorities.

In a separate report, Memorial said that 143 people were abducted or illegally imprisoned in Chechnya this year. A total of 70 people were later released or freed after ransom, eight were found dead, 54 still remain on the list of missing persons, while 11 were found in pre-trial detention centres.

Memorial monitors only 25 to 30 percent of Chechen territory, its report said. The group’s members said that 80 percent of victims do not report crimes committed against them to law enforcement agencies.

Chechnya is a largely Muslim region where militants have been waging a battle for secession from Russia. The southern Russian republic, with a population of 1.2 million, is surrounded on nearly all sides by Russian territory but shares a remote border with Georgia high in the Caucasus mountains.

Rich in oil, its economy and infrastructure have been reduced to ruins by years of war between local separatists and Russian forces, besides the armed banditry and organised crime.

Following research into abuses, the rights organisations said Chechen Prime Minster Ramzan Kadyrov’s forces routinely detained and tortured people, most of them at unlawful detention facilities. Researchers obtained detailed descriptions of at least 10 such facilities, most of which are private houses owned or used by regional commanders loyal to Kadyrov.

“If you are detained in Chechnya, you face a real and immediate risk of torture. And there is little chance that your torturer will be held accountable,” Europe and Central Asia director of Human Rights Watch, Holly Cartner, said in a statement.

“If you detain someone secretly, it’s a lot easier to abuse them. This is illegal under Russian and international law,” Cartner said.

Kadyrov’s forces use torture to get information about rebel forces, the HRW report said. Some detainees are released, and others are forced to join Kadyrov’s ranks. These forces have also taken hostages and mistreated relatives of rebel fighters, the report said.

“They beat me mercilessly,” one victim fictitiously named as Sulim S was reported saying. “They put me against the wall with my legs spread apart and kicked me on my privates. I later saw that the entire area in between my thighs was all black from bruises. They pulled my pants down and threatened to rape me. I kept telling them, ‘Just kill me!’ but they said, ‘No, we won’t kill you right away – we’ll do it slowly, and we will also rip your brother apart.’ I felt like during these interrogations I was dying over and over again, and they would revive me to continue.”

In the end, he said, “they offered me three crimes to choose from – a bombing of a bus, a killing of two policemen or a killing of one woman. But I refused.”

The rights organisations documented numerous cases in which personnel of the Second Operational Investigative Bureau (ORB-2) of the Russian Federal Ministry of Interior tortured detainees at official places of detention.

Detainees described being subjected to electric shocks and severely beaten with boots, sticks, plastic bottles filled with water or sand, and heavy rubber-coated cables; some also said that they were burned. In addition, the victims spoke of psychological pressure such as threats or imitation of sexual abuse, or execution, as well as threats to harm their relatives.

Rarely do authorities punish anyone for these abuses. When victims dare to launch a formal complaint, prosecutors refuse to open an investigation. Courts disregard the defendants’ allegations of torture, even when they are supported by medical records or witness testimony, researchers said in the report.

Amnesty International said the prosecutor-general’s office has the duty of investigating claims of torture, but that such efforts are undermined by its responsibility for criminal investigations.

“This is a case of the left hand pretending not to know what the right hand is doing. One can hardly expect (prosecutors) to be vigorous in investigating allegations of torture when it is part of the same system that relies on forced confessions to get results,” Amnesty’s Europe and Central Asia Programme director Nicola Duckworth said in a statement.

In February 2006, Stanislav Dmitrievsky, executive director of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (ORCD), an independent organisation that raises awareness about human rights violations in Chechnya and provides assistance to victims of the conflict, was convicted of “inciting racial hatred” for publishing articles about Chechnya.

The organisation, based in Nizhny Novgorod, about 250 miles east of Moscow, was also accused of administrative violations such as changing its address without informing the authorities, and failing to remove the word ‘Russian’ from its name. A civil court upheld the charges.

“We have constantly been receiving complaints from people from the republic about heinous crimes, sometimes just beyond description,” HRW’s Moscow deputy director Alexander Petrov told IPS.

“Obviously, talking about these we consequently become targets of the Kremlin. A new law on non-profitable organisations imposes unprecedented restrictions and burdensome reporting requirements that jeopardise our independence,” he said.

The government seems most determined to hit those groups that expose problems in Chechnya. The climate of impunity is worsened by the authorities’ persistent efforts to close Chechnya to outside scrutiny and to prevent documentation of abuses.

Last month, Russia refused to allow the UN special rapporteur on torture Louise Arbour to conduct unannounced visits and meet with detainees in private, forcing him to postpone his visit to Russia and Chechnya indefinitely.

Human Rights Watch has urged the UN Committee Against Torture, tasked with holding countries accountable for torture and ill-treatment, to send Russia a clear message that it must stop, punish and prevent acts of torture.