From Oksana Chelysheva, the editor of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS), www.humanrightshouse.org has received the below statement, which she recently presented to one of the plenary sessions at the OSCE summit in Warsaw. RCFS is urging both individual human rights activists and their organisations to appeal to Russian authorities to stop the harassment of human rights defenders. (01-OCT-05)

Harassment of the Russian human rights organization (the Russian – Chechen Friendship Society) by the authorities of Nizhny Novgorod Region

The Russian-Chechen conflict remains highly intensive and the general situation in the Chechen Republic is utterly unstable and is fraught with serious consequences. The Chechen combatants attack Russian federal forces, checkpoints, military vehicles and plant explosive devices almost every day. The Russian federal forces do not control large areas situated in the South of the republic. Forested and mountainous areas there are subjected to shelling and even air raids almost every day. Thus, we can speak about the on-going guerrilla war of the high level of intensity. The Russian and Moscow-backed Chechen authorities do not even manage to keep their own forces under control. The events in the settlement of Borozdinovskaya evidence it. The force agency Sulim Yamadaev command carried a special operation there on 4 June. Eleven people were arbitrarily detained. All of them disappeared without any traces left. As a result, more than 1000 residents of the village have left it for Dagestan. The reason is simple: fear for safety.  In addition, many Chechen citizens get abducted every day and perpetrators of these crimes move around the Chechen Republic in vehicles without any state license plates and in some cases they use military armored vehicles.

The conflict is spreading into the adjacent regions. The Russian-Chechen conflict is the detonator and the catalyst of the conflicts in Dagestan and Ingushetia, and partly in Kabardino-Balkaria. The assault on Ingushetia carried by units of Chechen combatants on 21-22 June 2004 is a glaring example of this tendency. The hostage-taking in Beslan on 1 September 2004 has deteriorated the situation in the region as it exploded the Ossetian-Ingush relations. The ideology of Chechen separatist movement is gradually slipping down to the radical Islam.

Corruption is one of the reasons that conditions spreading of terrorism. But there is another crucial thing that conditions it. In our opinion, impunity is the major factor that stipulates for reinforcing units of separatists and groups of terror with new people. The force politics carried by the Russian authorities in the North Caucasus has completely failed. Moreover, the authorities of the Russian Federation generate new waves of terror by ignoring all the rights of the population of this region. Some types of severe human rights violations have become less frequent but some other types of violations have become the usual practice. Thus, numerous total “zachistki” are carried not as often as it used to be whereas the number of abductions perpetrated by force agencies has become unprecedented. In the majority of cases the abducted people disappear without any traces left.   

Chechen officials are interested to keep the situation there as unstable as it is much easier to “fish in troubled waters”. The level of corruption in the Chechen Republic is crying and the market of corrupt services is very wide there. Officials of different levels profiteer by embezzling money allocated for the revival of the Chechen economy. It especially concerns the pro-Moscow Chechen leadership as there are many people with the criminal background among them such as Ramzan Kadyrov, Sulim Yamadaev and some others.

I’d like to illustrate this statement with the recent example what these people do to exercise their power. On September 14 this year in the town of Argun there was a clash between the guerrilla group and Chechen police forces that are subordinate to Kadyrov. The clash happened as a result of a mopping-up operation after one of Kadyrov’s people had been attacked by a group of young men who beat him up, took his arms and let him go. The next day Kadyrov’s servicemen rounded  up the house in Argun where the guerrillas were hiding and in a clash five of them were annihilated. Two of them were identified as Muskievs brothers. Kadyrov’s fighters brought the corpses to their native village of Tsptsin-Yurt, beheaded one of the corpses, put the head onto a pale. Both corpses were left in the village street unburied.

Besides, the present Russian authorities can be also interested in the instability in the Chechen Republic as they are trying to roll back the democracy and federalism in the Russian Federation and to curtail rights and freedoms of its citizens. To achieve it, the authorities need to create “the image of the enemy” among the population and to keep it in fear of acts of terror. Thus, they are justifying the destruction of the democracy in the Russian Federation in the eyes of the people by the fight on terrorism. We have to remind here that the direct elections of the heads of the subjects of the federation were cancelled immediately after the Beslan siege with the alleged purpose of combating terrorism. Russian-Chechen armed conflict has enormous influence onto the process of the restoration the authoritarian regime in the Russian Federation.
All the human rights organizations that are involved into coverage of the conflict of the Chechen Republic can become targets for harassment. Unfortunately, I have to state that the organization I work for has been under enormous pressure since January this year.  
It started with the criminal case commenced by the prosecutor’s office of N.N. region on January 11. The editor-in-chief of the Information center and executive director of the RCFS Dmitrievsky has been charged with “inciting hatred or enmity on the basis of ethnicity or religion” for allowing the publication of the peace appeals by Akhmed Zakaev and Aslan Maskhadov in the Pravozascita newspaper. Dmitriyevsky remains free pending trial but is under orders not to leave Nizhny Novgorod
President Vladimir V. Putin warned this summer that the Russian Federation would not tolerate “foreign financing of political activities” by private organizations. The legal assault here appears to be the first to make good on that threat, which echoed one he made a year earlier.
They want to do to us what they did to Khodorkovsky. They want to send a message to others. They started the criminal case, the tax claims, to show to others what can happen to them.
In one of the interviews the deputy prosecutor of the region Konstantin M. Moiseyev underlined the political aspects of the criminal case.
He said that Dmitriyevsky used the newspaper to publish criticism of the Kremlin´s policies in the Chechen Republic and the Northern Caucasus. The criticism, he said, amounted to fomenting hatred – paid for by the United States, as well as the European Commission and Norway, which also provided grants.
“We think that he is receiving grants from abroad – not only from the United States, but also from other countries that are interested in the Chechen war and reflect the interests of Chechen extremists,” he said. “They pay for that.”
Asked how such criticism amounted to inciting hatred Moiseyev replied, “The whole tendency is to reflect negatively on the policy of the Russian president and soldiers of the Russian forces.”
Our members have been threatened by unknown people. The first threats appeared in March this year. Dozens of leaflets with my name in a black frame and my personal address were distributed in the area where I live. It took the prosecutors two weeks to start investigating. However, the people behind the threats have not been established and the prosecutorship has suspended the criminal case.
Meanwhile, On Sept. 9  other leaflets appeared on the walls of the apartment building where  Dmitriyevsky lives, threatening him and Chelysheva by name. “Death to them,” one said. This time the criminal case has not been opened until now.
We continue to gather and publish information about the war and to defend ourselves. But it’s becoming more and more difficult as all these acts add up to the fiscal harassment we have been subjected to for the past months, culminating in the compulsory withdrawal of funds from the bank accounts despite the pending appeal filed against the decision of the tax inspection. But with our bank accounts frozen, we have no resources to pay for lawyers and auditors to challenge the charges. In addition, another criminal case has been commenced against us. This time we have been charged with “evading payment of taxes or (and) dues by an organization”. The criminal case bases the charges on the information collected during the audit of the financial activities of the RCFS conducted by the tax inspection although their decision has been appealed at the arbitrage court and it has been suspended by the judge. But the tax inspection ignores it and the accounts remain frozen. Besides, the criminal case was commenced on September 2, 2005 but we learnt about it only on 23 September.

We urge all of you to impose adequate pressure upon the authorities of the Russian federation so that they

· Put an end to all harassment against the RCFS and take effective measures to ensure the safety of the members of the RCFS.
· Protect the rights of all human rights defenders in the country in accordance with the international standards.