Massive Scale of Detentions in Chechnya

This excerpt from the Human Rights Center “Memorial” site describes the use of “filtration points” or concentration camps in Chechnya during 2000-2002. It concludes that according to conservative estimates around 200,000 Chechens have passed through such camps.

“Counterterrorism Operation” by the Russian Federation in the Northern Caucasus throughout 1999-2006

Filtration System

From February 2000, mass media started reporting about the situation in the “filtration points” (FPs) created by the federal forces in the Chechnya territory. According to the people released therefrom, the detained persons were held in the FPs in intolerable conditions being exposed to tortures and cruel treatment. Most often, such information used to come from the Chernokozovo FP in Naursky district of Chechnya. This former maximum-security penitentiary facility was turned into the largest of the effective filtration camps. However, Chernokozovo is not the only facility of this kind but just one of the elements in the whole system.

The key task of the “filtration system” was to identify and isolate participants of armed formations resisting federal forces and their supporters. However, it is obvious that the same system was aimed to resolve broader issues – it was used for creation of the network of informers recruited from among the local population and, along with other actions by the federal forces, for terror, suppression and intimidation of all the people disloyal to the regime in Chechnya.

The major characteristic of the “filtration system” was its non-selectivity. Lack of systematized data on the participants of armed formations resulted in mass detentions of innocent people, while their confession of the crime could be the only accusatory evidence against them. Obtainment of the confession was possible only through intimidation, beatings and tortures.

 

Child Torture in Chechnya

Caution: shocking material. Do not read if you are of a sensitive nature. Oh, if only more people on this planet were of a sensitive nature… From Amnesty International’s site.

No one of your son’s name has been arrested.

Adam Abubakarov, a 17-year-old Chechen, has had no contact with his family since February 2000 when he was arrested at an army checkpoint in the town of Urus-Martan on suspicion of being a Chechen fighter. Amnesty International fears that he has “disappeared”.

His parents have been told unofficially that he has been held in several filtration camps (army-run prison camps that allegedly “filter out” Chechen fighters from the fleeing Chechen population), where torture and ill-treatment are rife. His father was reportedly told in September 2000 that his son was in a prison in Rostov-on-Don. The authorities have denied that anyone of his son’s name has been arrested, and no investigation has been opened into the case.

 

Survival of The Chechen Language

Chechnya, like many other Caucasian republics, finds itself in a state of profound colonization by Russia. As elsewhere in the region, there are very few people who know and speak the pure form of their native tongue. In their everyday lives Chechens speak Chechen to one another, but it is a Chechen that has undergone so many transformations and is mixed with Russian to such a degree that it is often hard to say whether a person is speaking Russian or Chechen.

Not all Chechens understand pure literary Chechen. Because the Chechen language has long been subject to an unwritten ban by the authorities, it has failed to develop in richness and colour. While the number of Chechens able to read their native language has shown a dramatic increase in recent years,  until the appearance in 2005 of the dictionaries by Professor Aliroyev the most recent reference work they had to rely on was Karasayev and Matsiyev’s dictionary, which was published in 1978.

Even now the authorities are trying to push the Chechen language into the background, in order to make room for things that are materially more profitable, such as reconstruction, the budget, and so on. It is noteworthy that since Ramzan Kadyrov came to power in March, Chechen has been promoted to the level of state language - most probably because the President finds it much easier to express himself and understand others in his native tongue. However, this has not led to an increase in the number of Chechen-language store signs, a primary indicator of the status of a language.

A professor at one of Grozny’s universities tested it in practice, asking for a glass of fruit juice in a store, for example. The word for juice in Chechen is mutta. “Nine times out of ten they couldn’t understand me,”  the elderly Chechen professor complained bitterly.

Cultural colonization via the Russian language began in the Soviet era. Children at the schools in the towns and cities of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic studied any language but their own. In the villages there was a class in Chechen language and literature, but it received such a meagre slot in the schedule that it was probably only taught by teachers who were language enthusiasts.  It was impossible for two Chechens to converse in their own language on public transport in Grozny without attracting the attention of the Russian passengers. They were sometimes given a reprimand, as though the Chechen language were the bearer of something inherently hostile.

As a pupil at school in Grozny I can remember  the schoolmistress smacking me with the pointer and shouting at me that I was “forbidden to talk in that dog’s language.” I can also vividly remember how I, as a fourth former, embarrassed my Communist uncle with the question: “If we’re Chechens, then why are forced to learn German, English and Russian, but not Chechen?”. It is only now that he has confessed to me his discomfiture at the time.

Yes, Grozny was once a beautiful, leafy and international city where the representatives of different nationalities lived together as a friendly family. That is more or less how the Chechen-Ingush ASSR  is remembered. But at what cost was that internationalism maintained, and did it really exist? Most probably not, since internationalism by its very essence implies the presence of different linguistic groups. And in fact, there was only a single “friendly Russian-speaking nation”. How many Vainakh families became “Russified”, almost losing their national identity, and living in ignorance of their traditions, their laws, and above all their language? National identity was considered to be medievalism, obscurantism, and so on. Such was the stigma imposed on national traditions, for the authorities knew only too well that by cherishing them the Chechen people would be able to preserve itself in the multilingual Russian environment. It has now become fashionable to speak Chechen, but in the old days one could observe the absurd spectacle of two people talking to each other, one in semi-Chechen, and the other in standard Russian.

In spite of all the apparent Chechenization of the republic, only one daily Chechen-language newspaper  is available in Grozny - and it is merely a vessel for official propaganda. Most of the four-pages of the publication are devoted to Chechen translations of the decrees of the President and the government and other official cant.

For two years now in the republic, April 23 has been declared the “Day of the Chechen Language”. It causes the authors of this venture no embarrassment that only one day in the year is set aside for the language that is the mother tongue of the vast majority of the population. On that day there are readings of Chechen literature, well-known writers appear on the media and prizes are given tto those who have made “the most outstanding contribution to the cause of the promotion of the Chechen language.” A day of the Mongolian language could be declared in Chechnya with just as much success. Why not?

In spite of its ancient history, the Chechen language is presently experiencing a period of stagnation. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that many Chechens know that success in today’s society depends not on knowledge of nenan mott (the mother tongue) and its spirituality, but on very tangible and material things.

On the Chechen Language Today

 

Islamophobia Russian-Style

President Vladimir Putin has threatened to castrate a German journalist concerned about human rights in Chechnya. Read these excerpts about the Kremlin’s campaign against Muslims:

There are some 23 million Muslims in Russia, constituting approximately 15 percent of the population and forming the largest religious minority. Approximately 1 million Muslims live in Moscow. Elsewhere, Muslims live predominantly in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, the northern Caucasus, and the Volga region

Muslims constitute the majority in seven republics of Russia, including Chechnya and Tatarstan. Both Tatarstan and Chechnya-Ingushetia (as it was then) refused to sign the Federation Treaty in 1992. Tatarstan negotiated a separate treaty which gave it special rights as a “state associated with” Russia. Bashkortostan, another Muslim republic, followed suit in establishing confederal rather than federal relations with Moscow.

 

The Dark Night

“The death of Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, President of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, is a great and very sad loss for the whole Chechen land. May I express my sincere condolences to his relatives, friends, and comrades-in-arms.

“He was the youngest Chechen president in history.

“The fate of his family was tragic. Shortly before Sadulaev became president, his beloved wife, mother of his five children, was captured and killed by the occupants. He could not save his wife, because he was defending the whole Chechen land and the freedom of its citizens. But he did not like to talk about this tragedy, because there are tens of thousands of other Chechen women and girls, who were tortured and killed in Russian filtration camps.

“Indeed, life of a president is hard. In Chechnya, which is occupied but not subdued, being a president is also a mortal danger. Yet, it is a great honour. Not only is the land of our ancestors, with its mountains, rivers and forests, entrusted to the president, but also its freedom, for which so many Chechens have sacrificed their lives.

“In his last interview, published by the Bulgarian “Politika” weekly, Abdul-Halim frankly answered the trickiest questions of the journalists and defended his position very successfully. His speech was simple and unsophisticated, but it showed great depth of thinking and great purity of intentions.

“Politics is usually seen as a dirty business – and indeed, there are a lot of corrupt politicians. However, if all the politicians got a bit more alike our late president, the world would surely be a better place.

“Pity that we came to know and appreciate him so late… He was so young and handsome, but the God always takes the best people. Now Abdul-Halim Sadulaev is in the Heaven, together with our other presidents killed by Russia: Djokhar Dudayev, Zalimkhan Yandarbiyev and Aslan Maskhadov. And don’t believe they are dead. As Koran reads: “All those who follow the right way, I will take them alive, though you cannot understand this”.

“But look how many people with dead souls still live around us in this world! Surely, their fate is much worse than that of the fallen Chechen warriors.

“General Djokhar Dudayev, our first president, used to say “All the Chechens are generals, and I am only the last of them”. He loved his nation very much, and he believed in it. The death of another Chechen president cannot reverse the history, which is full of horrible crimes against the Chechen nation. The night is darkest just before the dawn.

“Time will come when the Chechen land frees itself from filtration camps and prisons, from block-houses and barbed wire. People shall return to their fireplaces, and Chechen towers shall rise again over Ichkeria’s mountains, resembling the real Kyonakhs. I wish the Chechen nation victory, bright sun, blue skies, and prospering land of Ichkeria.”

Alla Dudayeva is the widow of the first Chechen president Djokhar Dudayev, killed by Russians in 1996

Chechen Press

 

Chechnya’s Concentration Camps

‘During the first war 10,000 - 20,000 were detained in so called “filtration camps”, which were officially large scale non-selective detainment of individuals who were gradually “filtrated” to find members of armed forces and their associates who resist the federal forces. However, too many testimonies and especially the continuous disappearances of the camps where extrajudical executions, the practice of torture, ill-treatment, and killings, mostly of innocent civilians, occurred continuously. In the second war in Chechnya the strategy changed: there are now no permanent detention centres but “filtration points”. These are all “temporary filtration points” and are used for a day, a week or more. They are guarded areas – perhaps a disused factory or farm or just a bit of land enclosed with barbed wire, perhaps even tents, sometimes people are just detained in the open air but in an enclosed area. The detainees are brought in, undergo checks, may be tortured, are interrogated and very often held in covered vehicles. They bring the detainees in one at a time for questioning, they torture them, usually using electric shocks, they let them go, or sometimes they don’t, they take them away and bring in the next ones. When they finish their work they leave, it’s a temporary set-up. A “temporary filtration point” is the official name given to such set-ups by the federal forces, although there is no understanding of such a concept in any Russian legislation. Sometimes relatives must pay bribes to liberate prisoners or even to return the corpses of the victims.’

Human Rights Violations in Chechnya

 

Putin’s Genocide and Western Complicity

Putin’s “War on Terror” aka genocide of the Chechen nation enjoys many parallels with the West’s “War on Terror” aka War on Islam. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed offers his analysis of US and Western connivance with Putin’s genocidal policy in Chechnya.

The Smashing of Chechnya — An International Irrelevance

Excerpts:

From 1994-96, the Russians waged yet another war to crush the Chechens’ popular plea for self-determination. Though the Chechens eventually managed to drive Russia out, Russian forces still succeeded in slaughtering 100,000 Chechens, wounding 240,000, and scattering 17 million anti-personnel land mines across the country. Russia had used “mass artillery, rocket barrages, and airstrikes to smash Chechen villages and towns”, “conducted wide scale torture, and razed most of Chechnya to the ground”, reports the Toronto Sun. The former Soviet Union’s imperialist imperative had also received wholehearted support from its former Cold War enemy, the United States. “President Bill Clinton… helped finance Russia’s war in Chechnya.” Clinton had “lent Yeltsin $11 billion to finance the operation”, and “even went to Moscow, lauded Yeltsin, likened Russia’s savage repression of tiny Chechnya to America’s civil war, and had the effrontery to call Yeltsin ‘Russia’s Abraham Lincoln’.” The extent of American support for Russia’s campaign to subjugate the Chechen people was even clearer when in 1996, “Clinton reportedly ordered the CIA to supply Moscow top-secret electronic targeting devices that allowed the Russians to assassinate Chechen president, Dzhokar Dudayev, while he was conducting peace negotiations with Moscow on his cell phone.”

 

Chechnya: Mass Graves and Organ Theft

Mass Graves

It is surprising that the world community has not paid as much attention to the ditches where lots of bodies are buried together as they do in other parts of the world when they were found out in Chechnya. The dead bodies of people who had been lost since the beginning of 2001 have started to emerge in mass graves and the world has started to question Russia about them, but the ‘inquisitive mind’ has again gone out of the cycle. 25th February 2001 is a very important date in that, it was the revelation of the first mass grave. 200 corpses mass grave is found in Khan-Kala where there is a Russian military base , near Grozny. The legs and arms of the bodies were tied up and they were blindfolded. Before they could recover from this shock the Chechen people faced the second mass grave of 50 people. There was even the dead body of a one-year-old baby in that in Roshni-Chu.

 

Chechens Evicted from their Homes

CHECHNYA, Groznyy. On June 21 at approximately 3:00 p.m., representatives of the regional administration, together with local authorities, began the forced expulsion of inhabitants of the Okryzhenya temporary facilities, located in the Octyabrsky District. The inhabitants’ things were thrown onto the street, and their accommodations were boarded up, reported the information center SNO.

According to eyewitnesses, two “Kraus” trucks from the Urus-Martanovsk region entered the territory where the facility is located. It was “suggested” to the inhabitants that they gather their things and leave the camp territory. The forced migrants report that “siloviki” (military officers) ejected their things from their houses onto the street and behaved extremely aggressively. The attempts of the people to explain their position and to call on the “siloviki” not to undertake such actions were ignored. Almost all temporary migrants from camps No 24, No 26 and No 28, in the Octyabrsky District were evicted.

Forced expulsion of refugees from Grozny

 

Terror in Chechnya

“If anyone thought, during the fighting in Chechnya, that it could not get any worse, he was mistaken,” the Moscow Times quoted Neistat as saying. “In some places in Chechnya, people who managed to survive two wars are so terrorized today that they do not leave their homes and are afraid to speak out.”

On March 1 [2005], the Prava Cheloveka v Rossii (Human Rights in Russia) website, Hro.org, citing the Council of Non-Governmental Organizations, reported that the bodies of Rezvan and Zina Arsamemruev were discovered in the village of Goiti in the Urus-Martan district on February 27. The couple disappeared last December after they were abducted by unknown people in camouflage uniforms and masks. The victims were reportedly shot to death by assailants who used automatic weapons.