Chechenization of Russia

On Friday, January 28, the regular session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe ended.

The news that came from Strasbourg during the week concerned primarily the “main topics” discussed at the plenary sessions of the Assembly. And all the topics are unpleasant. Events in Georgia, Ukraine, again the “YUKOS case”...

There remained, however, the hope that not a word would be said about Chechnya. And everything seemed to have already been decided - in September the Assembly adopted three resolutions, two of which - on the situation of refugees and on the course of the political process - were more than satisfactory to the Russian delegation. The political resolution was equipped with an amendment, which, in the interpretation of the Russian authorities, excluded from the process, from possible “round tables,” for example, all opponents of the federal government - agreements, obviously, had to be made with Alu Alkhanov and Ramzan Kadyrov. True, the third resolution - on the situation with human rights, the draft of which was presented by Rudolf Bindig - contained unenthusiastic assessments. But now, in January, the Chechen issue was not on the agenda of the session at all.

However, Russian affairs were still discussed at a meeting of the Assembly's subcommittee on human rights on the afternoon of January 26, and on the morning of the 27th a public statement was issued with another condemnation of human rights violations in the Chechen Republic.

There was no talk about political issues - about Moscow’s “negotiations” with itself, that is, with Alkhanov and Kadyrov. They talked about what was happening behind this screen. About the ongoing abductions and disappearances of people: according to Memorial statistics alone, there were 396 people abducted in 2004, of which 189 disappeared, and the bodies of twenty-four were found... This is less than in 2003, but, on the other hand , now people are afraid to complain to the police or human rights activists, since Kadyrov’s men are often involved in kidnappings, and they are feared more than the federals. As a rule, there is no point in blaming the militants - they take people away in armored personnel carriers, which the separatists do not own. It’s also worth keeping in mind that Memorial’s data is incomplete, and these figures must be multiplied by at least two, or even four...

For example, on January 20, Grozny lawyer Makhmud Magomadov was taken away in an unknown direction - by the way, he was preparing materials on disappearances for the Strasbourg court. By a strange coincidence, on the same day in Nizhny Novgorod, FSB officers raided other human rights activists, the office of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society. Diplomatic language is generally restrained, but in these two cases, PACE parliamentarians “were shocked by the repressions against human rights defenders...”. At the same time, “the subcommittee condemns in the strongest terms the kidnappings, undoubtedly committed by members of the security forces controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov, of at least eight relatives of Aslan Maskhadov (including his sister Buchu Alievna Abdulkadyrova, 67 years old, and his brothers Lecha Alievich Maskhadov, 68 years old, and Lema Alievich Maskhadov is 55 years old).

And where did they get the idea that Kadyrov’s people were involved here? Ramzan himself denies everything! And the police say: we have no statements about this... But after the “memorial” reports about the abduction of the relatives of the separatist leader, journalists followed the trail, and it turned out - yes, they were taken away, yes, by Kadyrov’s men, but the internal affairs bodies made statements about this They don’t take it, they tear it. Because they are afraid. If fear has settled in the police, then terror is actually an effective thing.

By the way, similar cases occur outside of Chechnya, in the Bashkir Blagoveshchensk. People there are also afraid to write statements. Because in Bashkiria, from December 10 to 14, events occurred that indicate that what was feared and warned about (both by domestic human rights activists and Rudolf Bindig), namely the “Chechenization” of Russia, can be considered accomplished. In Blagoveshchensk, in fact, the first “cleansing” of a settlement outside Chechnya took place. It is impossible not to see a connection here with events in the Caucasus. The Bashkir riot police had previously operated in Chechnya for a long time - in particular, in the Urus-Martan region, where the number of “disappearances” of detainees was almost the highest in the republic.

When speaking about the events in small Chechnya, the Council of Europe always kept in mind this danger—the transfer of the experience gained there to the whole of Russia. Now, when waves of social protest are sweeping across the country, the temptation to use the experience accumulated over five years on a nationwide scale is especially dangerous. And all these five years, the documents adopted in Strasbourg were designed to protect not terrorists, not separatists, and not only Chechens - but all Russians.