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Resolution 1323 (2003)
The human rights situation in the Chechen Republic
1. The Parliamentary Assembly recalls
its previous resolutions and recommendations on the conflict in
the Chechen Republic. It makes particular reference to Resolution 1315 (2003) on
an evaluation of the prospects of a political solution to the conflict
in the Chechen Republic, which remains fully valid.
2. The Assembly reiterates its belief that there cannot be peace
without justice in the Chechen Republic. The human rights situation
in the republic is the key to an equitable political solution based
on national reconciliation. Without a tangible improvement of the
human rights situation, all attempts at pacifying the region are
doomed to failure.
3. For nearly a decade now, people in the Chechen Republic have
lived in constant fear. Their towns and villages have been reduced
to rubble, their fields mined, their friends and relatives murdered,
illegally detained, kidnapped, raped, tortured, robbed or reported
as having “disappeared”. The Assembly has consistently condemned
the gross human rights abuses, the violations of international humanitarian
law and the war crimes committed in Chechnya by both sides to the
conflict. Since the very beginning of the first conflict in Chechnya in
1994, the Assembly has called for those responsible for these acts
to be brought to justice – to little avail.
4. The people of the Chechen Republic have a right not just to
our pity but also to our protection. So far, everyone involved –
the Russian Federation Government, administration and judicial system
and the successive Chechen regimes – has failed dismally to provide
such protection from human rights abuses. Neither international
organisations nor their member states have managed to ensure that
the victims of these abuses are granted redress, either nationally
or internationally.
5. The main reason why both Russian soldiers and Chechen fighters
go on committing these abuses to this day is that they nearly always
remain unpunished. The Assembly pays tribute to the courage of some
brave victims, journalists, members of NGOs and human rights activists,
as well as honest officers of law-enforcement bodies, who have brought
to light violations of the law and who have strived, despite a difficult situation,
to restore justice. At the same time, the Assembly is disappointed
that criminal investigations of gross human rights violations, including
massacres of innocent Chechen civilians and targeted assassinations
of local heads of administrations or their families, are nevertheless
few and far between, depressingly ineffective and mostly fail to
secure convictions in court (if they reach that stage, which is
rare).
6. Non-judicial redress mechanisms set up by the Russian authorities,
such as the Office of the Special Representative of the President
of the Russian Federation for Human Rights in the Chechen Republic,
do little more than catalogue individual complaints. While the Assembly
pays tribute to the courage of the Council of Europe experts working
in that office, it asks that every effort be made to increase the
effectiveness of their current mandate as regards their possibility
of influencing the human rights situation.
7. The mandate of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation
in Europe’s Assistance Group to Chechnya has not been renewed by
the Russian Government. The Council of Europe’s European Committee for
the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has complained about the Russian
Federation’s lack of co-operation with it. The Russian Federation
has yet to authorise the publication of its reports and the recommendations
of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights are implemented
with long delays, if at all. The European Court of Human Rights,
set up to deal with individual violations of human rights, cannot
hope to cope effectively with systematic human rights abuses on
the Chechen scale via individual complaints. Lamentably, no member state
or group of member states has yet found the courage to lodge an
interstate complaint with the Court.
8. The result is a climate of impunity which encourages further
human rights violations and which denies justice to the thousands
of victims, embittering the population to a point where the Chechen
Republic could truly become ungovernable. If a meaningful political
process is to develop in the republic, human rights violations must
stop and those responsible for abuses must be brought to justice.
9. To ensure that human rights are respected in the Chechen Republic
in the future, the Assembly recommends that:
9.1. Chechen fighters immediately stop their terrorist activities
and renounce all forms of crime. Any kind of support for Chechen
fighters should cease immediately;
9.2. Russian forces be better controlled and discipline enforced:
all relevant military and civilian regulations, constitutional guarantees,
international law, including humanitarian law and in particular
the relevant provisions of the Geneva Conventions and the protocols
thereto, and the European Convention on Human Rights as well as
the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, should be fully respected
during all operations, including full co-operation with the prokuratura
before, during and after such operations;
9.3. in so far as the security situation allows, troops be
confined to their barracks or withdrawn from the Chechen Republic
altogether;
9.4. all those suspected of committing abuses be thoroughly
investigated and, if found guilty, severely punished in accordance
with the law, regardless of their rank and position;
9.5. the recommendations of the Council of Europe Commissioner
for Human Rights are implemented immediately by the Russian Federation;
9.6. the Russian Federation authorise the publication of the
reports of the CPT without further delay.
10. To ensure that those responsible for abuses are brought to
justice, the Assembly:
10.1. demands
better co-operation from the Russian authorities with national and
international mechanisms of redress, both judicial and non-judicial;
10.2. calls on member states of the Council of Europe to pursue
all avenues of accountability with regard to the Russian Federation
without further delay, including interstate complaints before the European
Court of Human Rights and the exercise of universal jurisdiction
for the most serious crimes committed in the Chechen Republic;
10.3. considers that, if the efforts to bring to justice those
responsible for human rights abuses are not intensified, and the
climate of impunity in the Chechen Republic prevails, the international
community should consider setting up an ad hoc tribunal to try war
crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Chechen Republic;
10.4. urges the Russian Federation to ratify the Statute of
the International Criminal Court without delay.