Concerns in Europe January June 2001
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- The Chechen conflict: impunity and continuing
Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001 61
Amnesty International September 2001 AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
executions. “The state should not assume the right which only the Almighty has - to take a human life,” he said. “That is why I can say firmly - I am against Russia reinstating the death penalty.” AI urged President Putin to use his authority to encourage ratification of Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides for full abolition of the death penalty.
It is frequently reported that asylum seekers arriving at Moscow’s international airport, Sheremetyevo II, are forcibly returned to their country of origin before their asylum claims have been considered. For example, on 29 March an Iranian asylum seeker who had been arrested on 21 February at Moscow international airport Sheremetyevo II was forcible returned to Iran, where it was believed he faced imprisonment and ill-treatment. The deportation was carried out despite the fact that his application to be admitted to the Russian asylum procedure was pending before the courts. The asylum seeker had applied for refugee status at the immigration control point in Sheremetyevo II upon arrival in Russia. On 15 March the immigration control point denied him admittance to the Russian asylum procedure, preventing his claim from being examined on its merits, a decision which was appealed in court on 28 March. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as the state agency responsible for ensuring compliance with international obligations, reportedly tried to prevent the deportation but failed. In another case, journalist Dodojon Atovulloyev, an outspoken critic of the Tajik government, was detained by Russian police on 5 July while transiting Moscow on a flight from Germany to Uzbekistan. He was reportedly arrested at the request of the Tajik authorities, and there were fears that he might be forcibly returned to Tajikistan, where he would be at grave risk of torture. However, on 11 July Dodojon Atovulloyev was released after the Russian Procurator General, to whose Extraditions Unit Dodojon Atovulloyev’s case had been referred, rejected the Tajik authorities’ request for extradition. Dodojon Atovulloyev’s lawyer told AI: “Dodojon is free. It is brilliant. He was released because of the great political pressure from the German government, the OSCE, and public pressure from human rights organizations.”
crimes against civilians
Both parties to the conflict in Chechnya continued to commit serious abuses of human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law. Russian forces were responsible for the overwhelming majority of physical harm and material damage suffered by civilians. AI and other international and Russian human rights organizations active in the region continued to document violations by Russian forces, including: arbitrary detention, torture and ill- treatment, “disappearance” and extrajudicial and summary execution of detainees, and the use of unofficial and secret detention sites. Chechen fighters violated humanitarian law by failing to protect civilian immunity during attacks on Russian positions, by attacking civilians who work in the local administration in Chechnya, and by ill-treating and extrajudicially executing Russian soldiers they have captured. During “cleansing operations” (in Russian,
continued to arbitrarily arrest and use disproportionate force against civilians. Most people who were detained during such operations are reportedly beaten or subjected to torture while held in incommunicado detention; bribes are almost always extorted from relatives in exchange for their release. Hundreds of others simply "disappear" in custody. The mutilated corpses of some of the “disappeared” and of many other, unidentified individuals have been discovered in more than a dozen dumping grounds throughout Chechnya. Federal authorities in Russia are not committed to a meaningful accountability process. Criminal investigations into abuses by military and police forces in Chechnya have been shoddy, ineffective, and incomplete. The federal government has not committed the necessary resources to investigations, nor are they empowering the relevant agencies to conduct them. Nowhere is the failure to investigate more obvious than in the case of Dachny village, where at least 51 bodies were found since January. No autopsies were performed on the corpses, and the authorities have rushed to bury, rather than preserve for the purposes of further investigations, those corpses that have not yet been identified. Non-governmental organizations and independent journalists continued to face significant obstacles to gaining access to Chechnya and to carrying out their work there.
On 20 February, while investigating reports of violations by the Russian forces, journalist Anna Politkovskaya was detained in the Vedeno district in southern Chechnya by Russian federal forces, on the grounds that she did not have official permission to exercise her profession in Chechnya and was thus “violating the accreditation procedures and regulations imposed by the military command”. Anna Politkovskaya travelled to Chechnya to investigate reports of torture, including rape, and that Russian forces stationed on the outskirts of the village of Khottuni were using pits in the ground as secret detention facilities. While in detention, Anna Politkovskaya was questioned about her journalistic investigation by Federal Security Services (FSB) officials, and she claimed officers threatened they would kill her. She was released without a charge on 22 February, following wide international publicity on the circumstances surrounding her detention.
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