Since August 1999, there have been 5,000 abductions in the Caucasus. The actions of Russia´s military in the region are already lawless. It is dangerous work documenting these human rights abuses. One of the few people who are brave enough to do it is Lidia Yusupova, a lawyer and human rights campaigner who directs the Grozny office of Memorial, one of the last NGOs still operating in the Chechen Republic. (25-AUG-07)

Based on the article “Chechnya’s last witness” in the First Post, Cheltenham (UK)
Re-published by Gunta Venge/HRH Bergen. Photos: the Rafto Foundation

“In the Russian Federation today you have no right to be a human being,” Yusupova, who was awarded the 2005 Rafto Prize, tells. “No right to live, tell the truth, plead for justice. You only have the right to be a slave. When power is used for self-interest it is not legally a state, it is just an organisation of criminals.”

European Court holds the Russian Federation responsible
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has made 13 rulings against the Russian government on Chechen cases. In July 2007 the ECHR ordered the Russian government to pay €143,000 to the villagers of Novy Alde for an atrocity carried out in February 2000, where 56 people were killed. One claimant, Malika Labazanova, 52, was dragged at gunpoint into her house by a soldier who “was so drunk he could barely stand up”. She escaped, but her 67-year-old sister-in-law, 54-year-old brother and another disabled relative were all killed. Her house was burned down along with many others.

“I live in the Stone Age”Lidia Yusopova_200.JPG
When human rights abuses occur, only a few people are brave enough to go to one of the four tiny offices of Memorial scattered around the Caucasus. The families of those who are abducted are too afraid to seek help and have no faith in the justice system so Lidia and her team travel out to see the villagers. “Every family in the Chechen Republic is traumatised. Families have lost two or three members. Sometimes it seems that I live in the Stone Age or an even earlier period,” says Yusupova.

Andreas Gross, a Swiss MP who monitors the Chechen Republic through the Council of Europe speaks highly of Lidia Yusupova and her team at Memorial. “Their work is invaluable. They are courageous – especially the young women.”

Latest cases from Ingushetia
Lidia Yusupova mentions last week´s report from Nazran, Ingushetia which details the results of another ´counter-terrorist operation” in the village of Ali-Yurt – 27 civilians hospitalised, including a woman seven months pregnant, children under 15 and elderly people. “Political and economic interests are now more important than the killing of one small nation in the Caucasus,” she says. “The world has put a label on this nation as terrorists or gangsters. It is a tradition that has existed since Stalin and Soviet times. Why does Russian society stay silent as if everyone is satisfied for this situation to carry on?”