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15 September 1995
Doc. 7384
OPINION
on procedure for an opinion
on Russia's request for membership of the Council of Europe1
(Rapporteur: Mr BINDIG,
Germany, Socialist Group)
I. The conflict in Chechnya
1. The Sub-Committee on Human Rights, in conformity with Order No. 506 (1995) of the Assembly, visited Moscow, Chechnya and neighbouring republics from 5 to 11 June 1995. I drew up an extensive report on the human rights situation in Chechnya, which also made specific recommendations to the Federal Russian authorities and the Chechen combatants, and concluded that "until these recommendations have been implemented by both warring parties, the human rights situation is unsatisfactory and unacceptable"2. This report was approved and made public by the Committee on 29 June 1995, and is reproduced in the Appendix to this opinion.
2. I returned to Moscow and Chechnya, this time with the other two rapporteurs, from 21 to 24 August 1995. Some of the recommendations made by the Committee have been implemented by both warring parties; the peace agreement of 30 July 1995, though fragile, is the most tangible result. The Federal Russian authorities have renounced the policy of aerial bombardments and direct attacks on civilians and civilian targets. The Chechen combatants have, in general, stopped fighting too.
3. However, other recommendations of the Committee have not yet been fully implemented. It is not clear whether the Federal Russian authorities have closed all their filtration points and abolished their accumulation points on Chechen and neighbouring territory; nor is it known whether arbitrary arrests have ceased, or whether all persons previously arbitrarily detained have been released. Agreements on the return to their homes of all internally displaced persons and refugees in the region are also still outstanding.
4. Tentative efforts seem to have been made to start investigating human rights abuses which took place in the last 10 months, but the results are meagre up till now. It is absolutely essential that individual criminal acts committed during this time (such as robbery, looting, wanton destruction, extortion, beatings, arson, torture, rape and killings, as documented in the Committee's report on the human rights situation in Chechnya) be prosecuted through the Russian judicial system. Civilian victims of physical violence (or their relatives in the case of the deceased) should be compensated in this context.
5. As was pointed out in the Committee's report, the extreme suffering of the local population, the terrible situation of the refugees and the high level of property destruction which the Sub-Committee witnessed in Chechnya should have made it abundantly clear that military actions can never be the solution to such a conflict. But whether this has been fully recognised by the Federal Russian authorities, who tend to classify the Chechen disaster solely as a "policy mistake", is doubtful. A profound discussion in the public arena thus seems necessary, so as to avoid a repeat of such a "policy mistake". The Federal Russian authorities need to renounce the excessive use of force as a policy, and must apply the rules of international humanitarian law (by which Russia is bound) in times of internal conflict - which they clearly did not do in Chechnya.
6. Furthermore, until there is proof that all filtration and accumulation points have been closed, and proper investigations (through the judicial system) of human rights abuses are underway, the human rights situation in Chechnya remains far from satisfactory. In this context assurances given by the Russian authorities in Moscow that the Committee's report as a whole will be responded to are welcome.
II. Developments in the Russian Federation as a whole
7. In principle, the analysis of developments in the Russian Federation as a whole should be made during the accession procedure.
8. While there may be some positive signs of improvement in the development of democracy (upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections, etc.), development in the area of the protection of human rights and the rule of law seems to have gone backwards, if anything. Particular areas of concern are the following: newly adopted legislation granting the secret services more powers than are compatible with a state based on the rule of law, little or no accountability in the armed forces (especially concerning Ministry of the Interior and OMON-troops3), threats to press freedom, a largely unreformed judiciary and prosecutor's office leading to a malfunctioning of the courts and miscarriages of justice (and even allegations of new show trials), a dismal prison system (which remains so far under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior) and a questionable treatment of internally displaced persons and refugees.
9. The Committee will have to investigate these and other areas of concern during the resumed accession procedure. It cannot do this alone, however - a position which should be understandable given the sheer size of the Russian Federation and its problems in the area of human rights and the rule of law. The report of the eminent lawyers of September 1994, concluded from a legal point of view that "so far the rule of law is not established in the Russian Federation", "the Russian Federation does not (yet) fulfil the condition `of the enjoyment by all persons within its jurisdiction of human rights and fundamental freedoms'", and "the legal order of the Russian Federation does not, at the present moment, meet the Council of Europe standards as enshrined in the statute of the Council"4.
10. After a discussion with the eminent lawyers in Committee in December 1994, the Committee asked the Bureau to invite them to go once more to Russia in order to update their report, taking into account the position of the Russian authorities, who claimed that the report did not cover new developments. Since the report is now a year old, and new developments have come to the Committee's attention, this is all the more true today. For this reason I propose an amendment to the draft resolution of the Political Affairs Committee, for the Assembly to invite the eminent lawyers to revisit the Russian Federation and update their report.
III. Conclusion
11. Since the main recommendation of the Committee to the two warring parties to lay down their arms and seek a peaceful, political and negotiated solution to the conflict in Chechnya is being implemented, the procedure for accession of the Russian Federation to the Council of Europe can be reopened in conformity with Resolution No. 1055 (1995) and Order No. 506 (1995), although the human rights situation in Chechnya still remains problematic.
IV. Suggested amendments
12. The Assembly is invited to support the following amendments tabled by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights to the draft resolution of the Political Affairs Committee on procedure for an opinion on Russia's request for membership of the Council of Europe (Doc 7372):
Amendment No. 1:
In paragraph 4, second sentence, delete "a solution through".
Amendment No. 2:
At the end of paragraph 5, add the following text:
"The participation of Assembly observers should be foreseen at the elections of the Federal Assembly (including on the territory of Chechnya), and the participation of observers of the Congress for Local and Regional Authorities should be foreseen for the regional elections to be held in Chechnya."
Amendment No. 3:
In paragraph 7, at the end add the following text:
"This progress also needs to be objectively assessed, however. The Assembly therefore invites the eminent lawyers to revisit the Russian Federation as soon as possible, in order to bring up to date their report on the conformity of the Russian legal order with Council of Europe standards."
Amendment No. 4:
In paragraph 9, first sentence, replace "are positive signs of" with the following words:
"is hope for".
Amendment No. 5:
Introduce the following new paragraph after paragraph 9:
"The Assembly invites the Committee of Ministers to pursue and strengthen its long-term co-operation programme for human rights, for the strengthening of democracy and for the building of legal order in the Russian Federation, and to keep the Assembly informed about the progress of the said programme's implementation."
APPENDIX
AS/Jur (1995) 22
COMMITTEE ON LEGAL AFFAIRS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
REPORT
on the human rights situation in Chechnya
(Rapporteur: Mr BINDIG, Germany, Socialist Group)
____
I. Introduction
1. In accordance with Order No. 506 (1995) on Russia's request for membership in light of the situation in Chechnya, the Sub-Committee on Human Rights (of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights)5 visited Moscow, Chechnya and surrounding republics from 5 to 11 June 1995.
2. After some initial difficulties concerning the timing of the visit (due to the insistence of the Russian authorities, the dates first envisaged - 1 to 7 May 1995 - had to be postponed), the visit was very well organised by our Russian hosts. The Sub-Committee on Human Rights was accompanied throughout its visit by MM. Lukin and Zapolsky from the State Duma, and Mr Podoprigora from the Council of the Federation (all of them members of the Parliamentary Special Guest Delegation to the Council of Europe). Their participation was very welcome. The excellent technical organisation of the visit, especially concerning means of transport (planes, helicopters, buses, etc.), as well as the impressive measures taken to ensure our security, and much generous hospitality, were noteworthy.
3. The Sub-Committee, after two days of preparatory meetings in Moscow, flew to North Ossetia on 7 June 1995, and was able to fly on from there the same afternoon to Assinovskaya, a strategically-located village in disputed territory between Chechnya and Ingushetia, where it met with local inhabitants. After spending a day in the neighbouring republics of North Ossetia and Ingushetia, where the Sub-Committee met with local authorities and refugees, it flew to Chechnya proper on 9 June 1995, visiting Grosny, Shali and Znamenskoye. Following a day spent in Nalchik (Kabardino-Balkaria), the Sub-Committee flew back to Moscow to meet with human rights activist, Sergei Kovalyov6.
4. However, the Sub-Committee regrets that the Russian authorities did not take into account any of the changes it proposed to the programme submitted by the Russian authorities7. In particular, the Sub-Committee regrets that it had no opportunity to meet with representatives of Mr Dudayev, and that it could not spend more time in Chechnya itself - it would have liked to see Argun, Samashki and Serzhen-Yurt, and to spend more time in Grosny8.
5. The Sub-Committee would nevertheless like to sincerely thank the Russian organisers of the visit. Special thanks also go to all the interlocutors of the Sub-Committee, both in Moscow and in the Chechen region, who took the time to meet us - often at short notice - and provided us with invaluable information in frank and open discussions.
II. The general situation in Chechnya
A. In the field
6. The historical background, the events leading up to the situation as it was until the end of January 1995, and the treatment of the civilian population at that time are all described in the Opinion of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights tabled for the Assembly's urgent procedure debate on Russia's request for membership in the light of the situation in Chechnya on 2 February 1995 (Doc 7231, an extract of which appears in Appendix II). Therefore, only the developments since the end of January 1995 in Chechnya will be described hereafter.
7. Militarily the capital of the Chechen Republic, Grosny, was finally taken by Russian troops at the beginning of February 1995. Although officially the city has since been "pacified", the military commanders the Sub-Committee spoke to in Grosny admitted that there were still fights and skirmishes in the city "every night", sometimes claiming casualties. An estimated number of 250,000 inhabitants of Grosny9 have returned to the ruined city, where the only public utility still working is gas (no water, no electricity). The situation is very bad, despite the efforts of international and non-governmental organisations, and the Federal reconstruction programme (the last of which we saw little or no evidence of). Most houses and apartment buildings, especially in the centre, are destroyed, or at least badly damaged by bombs and fire. What has not been destroyed has, more often than not, been looted. Putrefying corpses still remain in the cellars of some of the buildings, and the risk of epidemics in the city is rising as the summer gets hotter. Rubble, dirt and dust seem to be everywhere.
8. On 21 March 1995, the Russian Federal forces started an offensive which resulted in the capture of the last major strongholds of support for Mr Dudayev and his fighters in the lowlands: Shali, Argun and Gudermes (in eastern Chechnya) all fell. Between 6 and 8 April 1995, the village of Samashki in western Chechnya was taken by the Russian forces; reports of a connected massacre of up to 200 civilians during the taking of the village soon leaked out.
9. Mr Dudayev moved his headquarters and fighters south, into the more mountainous regions of Chechnya, to Shatoi, Bamut and Vedeno. The weekend the Sub-Committee arrived in Moscow, the Russian Federal forces attacked Vedeno and other villages lying in the way (e.g. Serzhen-Yurt). The Chechen fighters escaped further south into the mountains and swore to continue their fight.
10. According to General Kulikov, Commander of the joint command of groupings of Federal forces in Chechnya, whom the Sub-Committee met in Grosny on 9 June 1995, the Federal forces - amounting to over 40,000 in all - had established control over the lowlands by March, and were now operating in the highlands. By 9 June 1995, 80% of the Chechen territory and 90% of the population were said to be under Russian control. Three districts remained to be "liberated". Of the 12 to 13,000 fighters and the same number of reserve personnel Mr Dudayev had under his command in December 1994, only an estimated number of 1,500 to 3,000 die-hard fighters remained. A popular partisan war was excluded in the opinion of General Kulikov - in six to eight weeks' time he would have the Republic "technically" ready for elections.
B. The view from Moscow and neighbouring republics
11. The powers that be in Moscow - foremost the State Duma, the Council of the Federation, the Presidential Administration and the "power" ministries - are divided in their evaluation of the situation in Chechnya. While the latter three players seem to be united in their strong support for, if necessary, on-going military action, the State Duma takes a more moderate, but not always consistent, line.
12. The State Duma adopted three recommendations, and one draft law on the Chechen crisis, the last of the recommendations dating from 9 June 1995. The Duma concedes in these texts that the executive branch, including the President of the Russian Federation, did not use all possibilities to find a peaceful solution in Chechnya, and urges the executive branch to find one now. However, the Duma decisions are bound to remain "paper tigers" - the above-mentioned draft law, for example, was vetoed by the President because, according to him, it violated constitutional provisions. Mr Filatov, the Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration, called it a "populist" law - adopted to make the Duma look good, but impossible to put into practice.
13. Moreover, the State Duma itself is split into "patriotic" and "anti-military" factions. The Duma might not be actively supporting the war in Chechnya, but it did sack its Ombudsman for Human Rights, internationally acclaimed human rights activist and himself a Duma deputy Sergei Kovalyov, with a large majority, allegedly for slandering the Russian army and taking the Chechen side in the conflict. No concerted action from the State Duma to end the war can thus be expected, although it might pass another law granting amnesty to Chechen fighters surrendering their arms.
14. The representatives of the Council of the Federation the Sub-Committee spoke to during its visit took an even harder line. Emphasis was put on the character of Mr Dudayev's regime from 1991 to 1994, and on the alleged human rights violations (especially against the Russian population living in Chechnya) during those years. In the view of, for example, Mr Tarasenko, Chairman of the Committee for Federal Affairs and Regional Policy, the problems of the civilian population in Chechnya would only augment should the Russian military leave the region. Alleged atrocities committed by Russian troops were dismissed as "active and open disinformation"; the massacre at Samashki as "only a rumour".
15. The Presidential Administration, in the words of Chief of Staff Mr Filatov, could only see one channel out of the Chechen crisis last December: the military one. Mr Filatov also thought that military activities would still have to continue, although he declared that the Government was "prepared to enter negotiations on every level necessary". At the time of the Sub-Committee's visit, however, no negotiations were being held due to the unacceptable preconditions for negotiations of both parties: the Russian side was insisting on the Chechen fighters putting down their arms, and the Chechen side was insisting on the withdrawal of the Russian forces from Chechnya.
16. It is difficult to gauge public opinion in Russia to the war in Chechnya. In general it can probably be said that the majority of the population in the big towns - Moscow and St Petersburg - is against the war, while in the countryside a more "patriotic" approach would have the majority. In Moscow one of the most outspoken opponents of the war is the aforementioned Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergei Kovalyov. He himself and members of Russian human rights organisations, notably Memorial and the Soldiers' Mothers' Committee, have made numerous fact-finding missions into the Chechen region and have documented human rights abuses and atrocities. Their information has proved very valuable to the Sub-Committee on Human Rights.
17. In the view of practically all the people the Sub-Committee met in Chechnya's neighbouring republics - whether they were representatives of local authorities, local inhabitants or refugees - there had been no reason and no need for a military action with the means employed and in the form taken as it had been started in December 1994 and was still going on. Although there had been a certain lawlessness and disorder in the Chechen Republic under Dudayev, especially with the rising crime rate, there had been other means to reestablish law and order. By ordering in the armed forces, the Russian Government had chosen the worst possible and the least appropriate means "out of the crisis", in the view of these people.
C. The views of international organisations involved
18. Since this report is mainly to deal with the actual human rights situation in Chechnya, the reactions of the international community, international organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) should only be portrayed very briefly here in as far as the knowledge of these reactions is crucial to the understanding of what will follow in this report.
19. The Organisation on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) deployed an assistance group to Grosny on 18 April 1995, which is headed by a Hungarian diplomat, Ambassador Mészáros. It is the mandate of the assistance group to try and help find a peaceful solution to the Chechen crisis through negotiations and the rebuilding of democratic institutions in the area, in the framework of the Russian Constitution and in co-operation with the Russian Federation. On 25 May 1995, tentative first negotiations were held between representatives of Mr Dudayev and the Federal Russian authorities under OSCE auspices; however, after identifying the problems to be solved and dividing them into two baskets (military and political), the negotiations stopped and have not since restarted as explained above. The OSCE mission has no direct human rights mandate, it only refers complaints it receives to the "Joint Inspection Committee on Human Rights" of the Federal and the local authorities10.
20. The European Union (EU), following a resolution passed by the European Parliament on 19 January 1995, postponed the signing of the interim trade agreement with Russia indefinitely and strongly condemned ongoing human rights violations in Chechnya. The EU also supported the deployment of the OSCE assistance group to Grosny. On 15 June 1995, the European Parliament adopted another recommendation confirming that line.
21. The United Nations launched an inter-agency appeal in February 1995, to help those internally displaced persons who left the Chechen Republic. This relief effort, in which UNHCR, Unicef, the World Health Organisation and other agencies are involved, is closely coordinated with the International Red Cross (ICRC), which provides humanitarian and other aid within Chechnya. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and NGOs such as Médecins sans frontičres, Médecins du Monde and merlin are also active in the field. The work of all the above-mentioned organisations is highly laudable - their aid is, more often than not, the only aid which actually reaches the people in need ... the refugees inside and outside of Chechnya, the wounded and the sick in the Chechen hospitals and polyclinics, the population of Grosny without water.
22. Also very noteworthy is the work of international human rights organisations, especially the US-based NGO Human Rights Watch/Helsinki. Their four reports on the human rights situation in Chechnya11 are meticulous in their detail and highly informative. Other international human rights organisations, such as the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights in Vienna, are also doing most valuable work.
D. The Rapporteur's evaluation
23. The Rapporteur evaluates the general situation in Chechnya in the following way: The war in Chechnya has moved into a different phase. After the storming of Grosny, in which many military as well as civilian lives were lost, the military operations in Chechnya became more unpopular in Russia. Thus it seems that the Russian Federal forces have changed tactics: they are moving forward very slowly, driving Mr Dudayev and his fighters ever further south, but avoiding great battles, the storming of cities, and other military tactics which would put the lives of Russian soldiers at greater risk12. Aerial bombardment, however, is still widely used, and with it comes the destruction of villages at a high cost to civilian lives.
24. The tactics of the Chechen side are also changing. The war is increasingly acquiring the character of a guerilla war, with a smaller number of fighters mounting hit-and-run operations, sniping and executing terrorist attacks (like the recent one in the southern Russian city of Budennovsk). It is unclear to the Rapporteur how long Mr Dudayev's fighters might be able to keep up this kind of fight, but their elimination within six to eight weeks, as General Kulikov predicted, seems unlikely.
25. At the same time, the tension in the "occupied" or "liberated" part of Chechnya seems to be rising. Due less to the actions of the actual combat troops, than to the actions of the special Ministry of the Interior and OMON troops which follow in their wake, the population in these areas is becoming increasingly polarised. With many Chechen men being held without cause in filtration camps, where they are often beaten and sometimes tortured, with looting, robbery, extortion, arson, rapes and murders reportedly being carried out by special troops13, many Chechens are turning against Russians in general (including their neighbours, who are often seen as collaborating with the enemy). Ethnic Russians living in Chechnya, apart from the pent-up hatred for the Dudayev regime from 1991 to 1994, under which many of them suffered, live under the added fear of revenge attacks from their Chechen neighbours should the Russian troops eventually leave the territory.
26. Thus the general situation in Chechnya is not an easy one. A long drawn-out military operation on the Russian side, Chechen partisan war and terrorist tactics on the other, and hatred on both sides, have created a situation in the Chechen Republic which will be difficult to solve politically, let alone militarily. As this report will concentrate on the human rights situation in Chechnya, the Rapporteur will content himself with making only one recommendation on the general situation: a peaceful, political, negotiated solution to the conflict in Chechnya must be found immediately - there must be no more fighting (on either side).
III. Violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law
A. The Russian side
1. Acts of war
27. As has already been argued in the Committee's opinion on Russia's request for membership in the light of the situation in Chechnya (Doc. 7231), the 1949 Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War (especially the Fourth Convention and the Second Additional Protocol), the OSCE Code of Conduct of December 1994, as well as various United Nations Resolutions, all apply also to conflicts of a non-international character. Russia is bound by these documents of international humanitarian law14, and must apply them in the Chechnya conflict.
28. General Kulikov, when confronted by the Sub-Committee with some of the alleged violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Russian forces, answered that "regretfully, a dirty thing like war is always accompanied by dirty acts". This attitude, which also seems to be widespread among ordinary Russian soldiers, is not acceptable. The Geneva Conventions were, after all, conceived in the aftermath of World War II with its high civilian casualties in order to protect all human beings, including the non-combatants, from the ravages of war (so that a war would not include "dirty" acts committed on the civilian population any more). Of course, there are also limits to this protection of civilians dictated by absolute military needs such as acute self-defense, but as a rule international humanitarian war law is not to be derogated from in times of war precisely because it was designed for times of war.
29. As an example, let us take a construed border-line case, for the sake of argument: In an acute fighting situation, a soldier being shot at from inside a certain house defends himself and his fellow soldiers by throwing a hand-grenade into the house. Since it was essential for the soldier's effective self-defense to eliminate the fighter(s) in that house immediately, the soldier cannot be blamed if there were civilians in the house, too, which he did not know of. However, if he threw the hand-grenade either without he or his fellow soldiers being in acute danger, or if he knew while he was in acute danger that there were civilians in the house, too, and there would have been another way of eliminating the fighter(s) without endangering the civilians, the soldier would have violated international humanitarian law.
30. In reality, most allegations of violations of international humanitarian law by the Russian forces are far more clear-cut than the above example; sometimes they might even be classified as deliberate policy on the part of the Russian Federal command.
i. Aerial bombardments, long-range artillery shelling and indiscriminate fire
31. One of the complaints most often heard by the Sub-Committee (and independently confirmed by reports of the Human Rights Watch/Helsinki NGO), was that of indiscriminate fire. There were aerial bombardments: systematic grid bombardments in Grosny in December and January, and in Argun in March and April, cluster bombs in Gudermes, intermittent bombing in Vedeno since late March. Long-range artillery shelling was also common (for example in Shali in late March and early April), and the use of flamethrowers not unknown (for example, according to several witness testimonies we ourselves heard, in Serzhen-Yurt in the beginning of June). These practices of indiscriminate fire show a disproportionate use of violence on the part of the Russian Federal forces15, and are contrary to international humanitarian law because the civilian population should not be the object of attacks16. As one former Gudermes resident told Human Rights Watch: "... bombs can't tell the difference: civilian, fighter, Russian, Chechen."17 This is precisely why indiscriminate fire is forbidden - no adequate protection of the civilian population can be afforded.
ii. The alleged massacre at Samashki
32. There have been several reports concerning an alleged massacre in the village of Samashki in western Chechnya, which was taken on 7 and 8 April 1995. The reported number of victims vary widely, but official Russian sources put the number of deaths at 120 at least. The Russian military claims that Samashki was an enemy stronghold, and that most of the victims were fighters. According to journalists, NGOs and some witness testimonies, however, most of the casualties were civilians18. Russian soldiers allegedly threw hand-grenades into cellars in which civilians were hiding, burnt houses with flamethrowers and summarily executed civilians. According to the testimony of one Russian soldier we spoke to who participated in the attack19, the soldiers did indeed throw hand-grenades into the cellars because they were attacked by fighters shooting from the cellars (which would make the action a border-line case). Nevertheless, the same soldier also admitted that they summarily executed five captured fighters (of allegedly more than 100 detained) on the spot, "because they were snipers".
33. The Rapporteur does not want to give any evaluation of the alleged massacre at Samashki at this stage, primarily because the Sub-Committee was regrettably not given the opportunity by the Russian authorities to see the village and talk to local inhabitants itself. The terrible rumours the Sub-Committee heard amongst inhabitants of other towns in Chechnya and amongst refugees about the events in Samashki might be exaggerated; on the other hand, there does seem to be some evidence for the use of disproportionate violence by the Russian Federal forces. The final judgment on the alleged massacre, however, must be postponed until more facts are known.
iii. Direct attacks on civilians and civilian targets
34. One of the most disturbing reports the Sub-Committee heard was given by a group of elderly women in Shali, who recounted how they and their children had been "hunted like hares" from helicopters during the taking of the town. Another woman in Shali pointed out that the bombing of the town started on a market day, and that the first casualties - within 20 minutes - were civilians who had gone to the market. Several women both in Shali and in Assinovskaya from nearby villages complained that there had been no fighters in their villages, but that the Russian soldiers shelled the village anyway, and burnt nearly all the houses to the ground. For example, 90% of the village of Serzhen-Yurt in eastern Chechnya had reportedly been destroyed only days before the Sub-Committee's arrival.
35. The reports of Human Rights Watch/Helsinki contain numerous descriptions of other direct attacks on civilian targets or individual civilians, for example the torching of houses in Gudermes, widespread looting in Grosny and Shali, intensive shelling in Ishkoi-Yurt, and even the targeting of refugees (especially those in cars) on the roads of Chechnya. One woman we spoke to in Shali reported how her 46-year old husband - a non-combatant - died when a shell hit his car. Such direct attacks on civilians and civilian targets can never be justified, not even as acts of war. They are expressly forbidden, in fact, by the Second Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions.
36. Also expressly forbidden in this Protocol is starvation of civilians as a method of combat (Article 14). The Sub-Committee does not yet have enough conclusive evidence to allege that such a policy exists on the Russian side, but a tendency in this direction does seem to be manifesting itself. For example, in Shali an elderly man accused the Russian forces of deliberately trying to create a famine: He could not let his cows out, because they exploded on landmines. A woman added that she was not allowed to go into the fields because tanks were entrenched there - in other fields, the holes in the earth from the trenches were still there. Another woman complained that her vegetable garden had been deliberately destroyed by the soldiers. Everyone in Shali complained of hunger20.
iv. Abuses during disarmament
37. First documented in the reports of Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, and corroborated by one testimony the Sub-Committee heard, is a tendency on the part of the Russian forces to abuse their right to disarm in the following way: Typically, a village as a whole (independent from the fact whether there are fighters in the village) is asked to turn over a certain number of weapons, or face the shelling and/or sacking of the village as a consequence. What is even worse is the fact that, more often than not, the arbitrarily fixed number of weapons to be turned in is too high, so that some village elders even have to resort to buying weapons to try to avoid the collective punishment of the village. It is alleged that sometimes even when the demands of the Russian forces are met, as in Alleroi, Betti-Mokh, and Bachi-Yurt21, the villages are bombarded and shelled anyway.
38. Collective punishment against civilians is expressly prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Rapporteur again does not have enough evidence to allege that the abuses during disarmament described in the above paragraph result from a policy of the Russian forces; they might just be isolated incidents of a local nature. However, such incidents are wholly unacceptable. First of all, while the Russian forces have the perfect right to disarm villagers, they may never use or even threaten collective punishment of civilians should their demands not be met (and, of course, they may not make arbitrary demands, either).
2. The behaviour of Ministry of the Interior and OMON troops
39. One of the most recurrent complaints the Sub-Committee heard in Assinovskaya was not directed against the soldiers of the Russian Army, but at the troops that followed in their wake during the "occupation" of the village, whom the villagers called "mercenaries" or "professionals". After some questioning the Sub-Committee found out that the villagers meant special Ministry of the Interior troops (such as the SpetsNaz, or penitentiary department troops), or OMON-troops (a special police force - the abbreviation stands for "Special Mission Militia Detachment")22. These soldiers, unlike the mostly conscripted soldiers in the regular Russian Army (who do the actual fighting), are professional soldiers who serve under fixed contracts with - in comparison - attractive salaries. Their official task is to "clean up" an occupied village - ferret out and capture fighters, disarm villagers, and keep law and order in general.
40. Most of the - unfortunately very common - complaints about the behaviour of the Russian troops were directed against these special forces (except for the few complaints against the Russian Army as such, treated under the preceding chapter "acts of war"). The Sub-Committee heard gruesome accounts from a high number of witnesses, which cannot all be described at this point. However, they can be classified into the following categories:
* robbery and looting (especially of valuables and TV and Hifi equipment, but also of clothes),
* wanton destruction (often soldiers stole all they wanted, and then lifted their machine-guns and destroyed the rest23),
* extortion (we heard accounts of soldiers charging for access to water or for food, or simply for the right to pass);
* arson (houses which have been looted are regularly torched; (empty) houses of refugees are set on fire as a matter of course in some villages like Assinovskaya),
* rape (more rare, we heard accounts of only two rapes in Assinovskaya - there is no evidence of systematic raping like in Bosnia-Hercegovina),
* "disappearances"24/ hostage-taking (especially in Assinovskaya, soldiers would take away men between the ages of 12 and 60, all non-combatants, in the middle of the night, either to take them to filtration points or to demand ransom; some young men, both in Assinovskaya and in Shali, have "disappeared" completely after being detained by Russian soldiers).
The Sub-Committee heard no allegations of actual cold-blooded murder25 by occupying forces (except in connection with the filtration points, which will be treated in the following chapter).
41. All these incidents, it should be underlined, took place not during or immediately following combat actions (such as the taking of the village), but afterwards - sometimes even months after the village had first been occupied (like in the case of Assinovskaya). Nobody had ever heard of any soldier being prosecuted for such acts, let alone being convicted; the sole exception to this rule was General Kulikov, who claimed that 60 investigations had been started, and that of these, about 20% had led to convictions. Many villagers suspected that sometimes these cruel acts were not even "spur-of-the-moment" actions by a few mean or drunk soldiers without the knowledge and/or approval of their superiors: Sometimes the superiors seemed to have known and tolerated such outrages, and sometimes they might even have ordered them, possibly as part of a policy aimed at crushing Chechen (civilian) resistance - a policy of terrorizing the local population. Whether with or without the knowledge and the approval of commanding officers, such human rights abuses as those listed above are, of course, completely and utterly unacceptable.
3. The filtration points (FPs)
42. The Russian NGO Memorial has recently published an extensive report on the conditions in the so-called "filtration points" (abbreviated FP)26, based on the findings of fact-finding missions and extensive witness testimony. In the following paragraphs, the Rapporteur will base himself on this report, on the Sub-Committee's interviews with Memorial representatives and human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov, but most of all on the witness testimonies gathered by the Sub-Committee itself during its visits to the filtration points of Mozdok and Grosny, and during its talks with ex-detainees and their close relatives in Assinovskaya, Shali, and refugee camps.
43. In general, the policy of the Russian Federal forces seems to be the following one: After a village has been taken by the Russian Army, the special Ministry of the Interior and OMON-troops which move into the village search the houses of all villagers for fighters and/or weapons. During this process, nearly all men left in the village, especially the young ones - the large majority of which are neither fighters nor in the possession of weapons - are detained and transported to "accumulation points". In fact, all Chechen men on Russian-held territory are routinely detained, in their own homes, at road blocks, or in the fields. Normally no reason for the detention is given; if one is given, it is "suspected fighter", "possession of arms", or "verification of identity". The last reason is to many the most obnoxious, since there have been cases when the detained person was in possession of all his documents, but these were either taken away or destroyed by the troops who detained him27.
44. The filtration points were set up by the Ministry of the Interior to "filter" combatants from non-combatants. However, there is absolutely no legal base for their setting up under Russian law. The FPs operate in a complete legal void; officially, they do not even really exist, since there is no base for their existence. For this reason, there are also no guidelines as to who could or should be taken there. The arrests are thus completely arbitrary - the Ministry of the Interior troops can arrest and detain anyone they want in the FPs. So, more often than not, ordinary Chechen men - civilians, not fighters - are "suspected" and taken to the FPs.
45. Due to an overwhelmingly high number of witness testimonies, it can be stated that detainees are generally beaten and otherwise mistreated on the way to and in filtration points. Beatings are common, deprival of sleep, food and water also, and sometimes there is torture (in isolated cases allegedly even leading to death). In general, detainees are asked simple questions by investigators ("Are you a fighter? Do you have arms?" and "Do you know a fighter? Do you know where fighters are hiding?"), while they are intermittently beaten by the guards to be made to confess28.
46. After several days, most detainees are simply released. Some are charged with various crimes and sent on to pre-trial detention centres in mainland Russia29 (there have been allegations also of people being sent on to such centres or directly to prison-camps without being charged with any crime); some are ransomed by their families in secret; some are exchanged against Russian soldiers captured by Mr Dudayev; some are exchanged against the dead bodies of Russian soldiers. Some detainees are given certificates that they have been through a filtration point, to avoid their immediate re-arrest, but most detainees are given no such documents. According to provisional Memorial figures, at least 2.000 Chechen men had been arrested and detained in filtration points by the beginning of June 1995.
i. Pre-filtration point treatment ("accumulation points")
47. Apparently most detainees are first taken to "accumulation points" before they are transferred to the proper filtration points on foot, by car, bus, lorry or helicopter. These "accumulation points" can be anything: fields, cars and lorries, yards, garrison buildings, or (worst of all) pits. We heard one statement by the mother of a young man in Assinovskaya who had been detained at the end of February and taken to a field where men were being gathered. Their eyes were bound (this seems to be standard procedure) and their hands tied behind their backs; then they were made to run across the field while the soldiers beat them on the legs. Finally they were "loaded" into a helicopter (they had to lie one on top of the other); during the flight the soldiers threatened to throw one or two of the detainees off the helicopter because the weight was too much. Another old man in Assinovskaya had himself been transferred by helicopter to the FP in Mozdok - he testified that the soldiers beat the detainees even during the flight, but especially upon arrival.
48. In the above-mentioned report by Memorial, several other such incidents of ill-treatment at the "accumulation points" are described, including the holding of detainees in earth pits (with their eyes bound), where they were severely beaten30. Forced foot marches to filtration points, during which detainees were beaten and sometimes even shot at31, are also documented in the report. These testimonies were confirmed by the representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) the Sub-Committee met in Moscow: most beatings and ill-treatment of detainees seemed to take place before they reached the filtration points.
ii. Mozdok filtration point
49. A visit to Mozdok filtration point had been on the programme of the Sub-Committee since the very beginning. However, when it arrived in Moscow, Mr Filatov (Chief of Staff of the Presidential administration) informed the Sub-Committee that the filtration point in Mozdok had been closed two days prior (on 3 June 1995). When the Sub-Committee came to Mozdok on 8 June 1995, the local authorities confirmed that the filtration point had been closed a week earlier, and offered the opportunity to visit Grosny filtration point instead. The Sub-Committee, however, insisted on nevertheless seeing the empty FP in Mozdok, and sent a small delegation there. The delegation was shown where the three special railway cars32 which had constituted the filtration point had stood at Lukovskaya railway station. It was able to talk to some of the station service personnel, because the service cars of the FP-train were still there. They confirmed that the railway cars had been driven to Rostov-on-the-Don two days prior, on 6 June 199533. There had been a lot of coming-and-going on the platform before, but the station personnel was unable to say whether there had still been detainees in the railway cars when they left for Rostov.
50. One young refugee from Assinovskaya the Sub-Committee spoke to in Nazran was first held in Assinovskaya for two days (at the end of April), where he was beaten with electric wires across his stomach and shoulders, before he was taken to Mozdok filtration point. In Mozdok he was held in a railway car with barred windows for 18 days. The guards demanded 6 million roubles (about US$ 1.200) for his release, but his family could not come up with the money. In Mozdok FP he was severely beaten (also with the butt of a machine-gun) and kicked, which had caused damage to his liver and kidneys. While he was beaten, the commanding officer used to shout "don't touch the TV-screen", meaning his face34. Once he was tortured, with two electric wires being put under his tongue. He saw how dogs were set on fellow detainees. While he was in the FP, the International Red Cross visited it. The guards stopped beating the detainees the day before, and warned everybody not to complain to the delegation, because "they come and go, but you stay". The guards also threatened to kill anyone who would tell the truth. After the visit of the Red Cross, one Russian detainee was taken out of the railway car and buried alive - in the sight of the other detainees - because he had told the Red Cross something. Finally the man we talked to was released in an exchange between Chechen fighters in Bamut and the Russian federal authorities, against the bodies of two Russian soldiers.
51. The testimony of this young man is corroborated by several other testimonies the Sub-Committee heard in different places: especially the threats to detainees not to tell international delegations about their mistreatment were very common, and specially trained dogs were mentioned more than once. The Memorial report also contains witness testimonies of torture using electric wires in Mozdok FP. By mid-April 1995, according to official documents, 535 men had passed through Mozdok FP, of which 89 were exchanged for Russian soldiers captured by fighters of Mr Dudayev. The Sub-Committee must under these circumstances give credit to the widespread allegations that the Russian Federal forces detained so many Chechen civilians in filtration points on purpose, so as to have a "pool" of prisoners to exchange against captured Russian soldiers35.
iii. Grosny filtration point
52. After some negotiations with the Russian authorities, the Sub-Committee was allowed to visit Grosny filtration point at short notice, an opportunity for which the Sub-Committee is very thankful. Grosny FP is located in a heavily guarded building (a former bus depot); its ground floor had been provisionally reconstructed to house prison cells and investigation rooms. Both the cells and the rooms are nearly completely bare, with no natural light, a few (half-broken) chairs and tables in the investigation rooms, and dirty mattresses and rugs in the cells. At the time of the Sub-Committee's visit, there were 44 detainees in 7 cells. The director of the establishment explained that most detainees were held for common crimes, such as thievery, murders, or narcotics; the real fighters could be counted on the fingers of one hand. The maximum detention time was meant to be 30 days, but the detainees were only held until the investigator had found out whether they were connected to illegally armed gangs or not. The detainees were subsequently released or transferred to pre-trial detention centres. The director informed us that there were no detainees in Grosny FP who had been transferred from the closed Mozdok FP. The presence of a lawyer was obligatory when the penal investigation started, but during the establishment of someone's identity or during "first inquiries", no lawyers were present.
53. The first cell visited contained only women. All of them were accused of theft or of buying and selling stolen goods. They had been in the FP for two months36, and had had no access to a lawyer. The investigator had visited them for the first time that very same day. In the second cell there were five men, two accused of murder, two of theft, and one of not reporting - none were suspected fighters. Two of them had been in the cell for one month already. In the third cell there was a young Russian man living in Estonia accused of being a mercenary fighter for Mr Dudayev, because he had been unable to produce his papers at a road block.
54. It was impossible for the Sub-Committee to speak freely with the detainees, but we were informed that the ICRC had free access, and had actually been interviewing detainees in this filtration point only days before our arrival. The Sub-Committee had not heard as many witness testimonies of beatings and torture about Grosny FP as it had about Mozdok and other FPs. The Sub-Committee was surprised that Grosny FP seemed to be somewhat of a mixture between an ordinary pre-trial detention centre and a filtration point. If the Mozdok filtration point was really closed for good (and not just closed temporarily, or moved to another town), and the Grosny filtration camp was operating more and more like a normal pre-trial detention centre, that could be an encouraging development. However, the Rapporteur has his doubts: due to the continuing "disappearances" of young male Chechens, some witness testimonies of former detainees who had been released only in mid-May 1995, as well as the (extreme) illegal length of detention in Grosny FP. In any case, the Russian authorities must be asked to close these filtration points and to cease the arbitrary arrests and the illegal, as well as too lengthy detentions connected with them, since there is no legal basis for their existence.
B. The Chechen side
55. The Russian Federal forces are, of course, not the only ones guilty of human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law; the Chechen combatants seem to have committed them as well. The fact that the Sub-Committee was able to document more abuses on the Russian than on the Chechen side is due also to the fact that the Sub-Committee had relatively free access to Russian-controlled regions and Federal installations (such as filtration camps), while it could not enter the territory controlled by Mr Dudayev's fighters (for example, to see in what conditions captured Russian soldiers were held there).
56. It is perhaps interesting to note that most complaints directed against the Chechen side were not connected to the armed conflict which broke out in December 1994 - especially the Russian authorities, but also Russian local inhabitants and refugees complained more about the unlawful character of Mr Dudayev's regime in the three preceding years. The Rapporteur cannot, of course, go into these allegations in depth, since his mandate is to report on the present human rights situation in Chechnya, but he will sum up the allegations.
1. The Dudayev regime 1991-1994
57. One of the complaints which is so recurrent even among the Chechen local population that it seems entirely credible, is the lack of law and order during the Dudayev regime 1991-1994. Apparently Mr Dudayev, when he came to power, proclaimed an amnesty for common criminals, with a consequent rise in the crime rate, and an especially high rise in the proportion of violent crimes (robbery, rape and murder). The prime victims of these crimes seem to have been the Russians living in Chechnya. As far as the Rapporteur can judge, this was not the result of an "ethnic cleansing policy" on the part of the administration, but of a general breakdown of law and order. In this situation, where local policemen were unable (or possibly also unwilling) to provide protection, the main deterrent of criminals was the tradition of the blood feud - if a criminal murdered a Chechen, his family would go after him. The Russians living in Chechnya had no such traditions, so that criminals seldom had to be afraid of starting blood feuds if they attacked them37. So the local Russian population became an "easy" target for criminals. Especially widespread was apparently also the crime of extortion: Criminals would force Russians to sell them their flats for a tenth of the market price.
58. Another very recurrent complaint amongst both the Chechen and the Russian local population was the non-payment of wages and pensions at least in 1994, probably even earlier. The Rapporteur finds it difficult to understand how people managed to survive without receiving any money for months, but again Chechen family ties and traditions might provide the answer: One Chechen refugee explained that well-off neighbours (private businessmen and traders) would share their profits with family and friends. This would also explain why, again, the local Russian population was harder hit due to their lack of Chechen clan ties. The question whether Mr Dudayev and his administration withheld salaries and pensions on purpose (for example, to buy arms, as some people allege), or whether he was unable to pay them (for example, because the Federal pension scheme had cut off its money supply to the Chechen republic), the Rapporteur is unable to answer.
59. The main complaints raised by the Russian authorities and the newly created Chechen authorities concerned the persecution of the opposition and an alleged policy of "ethnic cleansing" against the local Russian population. While the allegations concerning the persecution of the opposition (in some cases, leading to their detention, forced exile, or even murder) seem quite credible, the Rapporteur is unable to judge the truthfulness of the latter allegation. He personally has doubts, but will withhold judgment until more facts are known.
2. War-related human rights violations
60. The most probable violation of international humanitarian law that Mr Dudayev's fighters are committing is that of using civilians as shields. The American NGO Human Rights Watch/Helsinki has documented at least one such case in Grosny, where Chechen fighters used a civilian building as an ammunition dump and parked a tank in front of it, so that the (apartment) buildings in its vicinity drew the fire of Russian forces38. It is difficult to find out whether Chechen fighters behaved in a similar way, for example, in Samashki and Serzhen-Yurt. So as not to violate international humanitarian law, Chechen fighters should either not take up positions near civilian dwellings, or if they have to, they must give civilians clear warnings to evacuate before taking up such positions. Otherwise they would be responsible for civilians and civilian structures becoming legitimate military targets, a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.
61. Another violation of international humanitarian law seems to have occurred during the storming of Grosny, when Chechen fighters - unintentionally - killed a civilian woman through indiscriminate small arms fire39. According to the rules of war, fighters must identify their target before they shoot: if they cannot do so, they must hold their fire. The Rapporteur would like to underline, however, that this seems to have been an isolated incident. Grosny, at the time the Sub-Committee visited it, was very unlike Sarajevo, where civilians are killed by snipers and shells as a matter of course. The streets of Grosny were populated by civilians as well as by Russian soldiers, but the civilians moved freely, unafraid of snipers. Chechen snipers, in fact, do operate in Grosny, but apparently they do not target civilians, only soldiers in uniform.
62. Terrorist attacks are entirely another matter, of course. In Budennovsk (outside Chechnya), Chechen fighters under the leadership of a Mr Shamil Basayev attacked the city and then took hundreds of hostages in the hospital, killing civilians both directly during the storming of the city and indirectly by using them as human shields when special Russian forces attacked the hospital40. There were also reports of the summary shooting of five young Russian men on the first night in the hospital. The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has always condemned terrorism in every guise. The Rapporteur underlines his horror at and his strong condemnation of the events at Budennovsk; these constituted a clear violation of human rights which cannot be justified in any way.
63. When the Sub-Committee was in Moscow, it met two recently discharged Russian soldiers who had fought in Chechnya since the beginning of the military operations there. These soldiers reported that Chechen fighters had castrated twelve captured Russian soldiers, and then released them. According to the soldiers, who had, however, not seen anything themselves, only two of the castrated soldiers managed to "crawl back". Rumours of this kind seem to abound among the Russian Federal forces serving in Chechnya.
64. According to official Russian sources quoted by Mr Kovalyov, however, not a single case of a live castrated soldier is documented, although a criminal investigation has been started concerning the mutilation of nine dead bodies of Russian soldiers. Of these 9 bodies, three on the list were described as suffering from "traumatic castration". It is unclear whether this means that the castration was the result of an injury to the genitals sustained during combat, or whether these castrations were deliberately carried out. In any case, medical experts confirm that the mutilations were not carried out on living soldiers (and did not induce their death); they were either carried out during the death throes of the soldiers or after their death. This is not to say that the mutilation of dead bodies is allowed; on the contrary, the desecration of the dead is most awful, of course, and must be very forcefully condemned. However, the Rapporteur is not entirely convinced that any of the castration rumours are true.
65. In fact, the Sub-Committee received evidence to the contrary from people who saw themselves how Russian soldiers captured by Chechen fighters were held: apparently in quite humane conditions41. There are two known cases of wounded captured Russian soldiers being attacked by (also wounded) Chechen fighters in hospitals; in one case leading to the death of the Russian soldier. However, these incidents seem to be isolated and do not seem to be the result of a deliberate policy on the part of the Chechen administration42. The Rapporteur calls on the Chechen fighters to respect international humanitarian law regarding the treatment of captured enemy soldiers, and to treat them humanely.
IV. The rule of law
66. The Rapporteur will obviously only cover the question of the rule of law in as so far as it applies to the Chechen situation (the situation in Chechnya itself, and the situation of the refugees). The rule of law in the whole Russian Federation will not be treated here.
A. Military discipline and judicial sanctions
67. Before the intense fighting in and around Grosny at the end of December 1994, many soldiers had reportedly not been very motivated to fight. According to human rights organisations, the Federal command had reacted with a "wave of propaganda", trying to brand the Chechens as the (cruel) enemy. This policy had - to some extent - backfired, since it caused the mood in the Army to change to quite an ugly one (the Russian Army as the "avengers"), leading to widespread looting and other human rights abuses also against the civilian Chechen population. Now the Federal command was apparently trying to make amends, by - in the words of General Kulikov - "strengthening the discipline in the Army". This was to be achieved, for example, by directives and recommendations to officers to explain the rules of international law to their soldiers.
68. As can be seen from the preceding chapter, this policy does not seem to have yielded very tangible results. The discipline in the Russian Federal forces, especially in the special Ministry of the Interior and OMON troops, seems to remain very lax. For example, the local prefect of the Assinovskaya region we spoke to, who did not in general complain about the Russian forces, testified that not a single case of (documented) human rights abuses in filtration points had been investigated, let alone prosecuted. The Joint Inspection Committee, the head of which we met in Grosny, whose official task it is to investigate human rights abuses in Chechnya, admitted they were not investigating any complaint of abuse in FPs. One woman who worked in the local prosecutor's office in Znamenskoye testified that, even when the prosecutor arrested a Russian soldier for murder, he was required to bring him to the commanding officer in the garrison, who would immediately set the soldier free again. The military prosecutor's office was starting to investigate cases according to General Kulikov, but the Rapporteur has his doubts.
69. It can thus be summarised that in principle there seems to be no investigation or prosecution of human rights abuses committed by Russian Federal forces against the Chechen population, neither through military discipline, nor through the ordinary judicial system. This is an unacceptable situation43. Military discipline must be strengthened in such a way that arbitrary arrests, looting, extortions and the whole list of abuses in Chapter 3.A.2 of this report either are prevented in the first place, or are properly prosecuted afterwards.
B. The refugee question
70. Connected with the situation in Chechnya, both before and after the military conflict started in December 1994, is the question of refugees, or rather, to be more exact, of internally displaced persons (refugees cross internationally recognised borders). An estimated total number of 450.000 persons have crossed the border from Chechnya into neighbouring Russian Federation republics (Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria) and regions. 160.000 refugees from Chechnya have been taken in in Ingushetia alone44. Most refugees are accommodated by family and friends; only an estimated 15% actually live in refugee camps. These camps are usually in a very sorry condition due to the lack of money45.
71. This is where the lack of the rule of law comes in: Although the Federal Migration Service is meant to give assistance, this assistance often does not arrive on the spot, or is much too sparse. For example, the Deputy Chairman of the Ingush Government, responsible for the refugee question, informed the Sub-Committee that Ingushetia had only received 3 billion roubles of state assistance, out of the 337 billion roubles that it had had to spend. We heard from other sources, too, that often the state paid only 5.000 roubles (US$ 1) a day even for the poorest refugees, which was not even enough to pay for one canteen lunch. In principle, refugees were meant to receive one minimum wage upon their arrival, free medicines, and up to ten minimum wages for burial costs. More often than not, however, the only aid that actually reached the refugees was from the Federal Ministry for Emergency Situations (canned food), humanitarian relief organisations, like the ICRC or UNHCR (food, blankets, kitchen and hygiene kits, etc.) and some NGOs.
72. One of the main problems the refugees faced was the dearth of jobs, school- and kindergarten places. Although the local authorities and regional representatives of the Federal Migration Service often did their best, they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of refugees in need of aid. On the part of the Federal government, the aid to the recipient republics and regions of internally displaced persons needs to be augmented, but, most of all, it needs to be better organised and more clearly regulated, so that the aid reaches its destination.
V. Conclusions and Recommendations
73. In conclusion it can be said that violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law have been committed by both warring parties, as documented in Chapter 3 of this report. On the side of the Federal Russian authorities, indiscriminate fire, human rights abuses by special Ministry of the Interior and OMON troops (including robbery, looting, extortion, arson, and "disappearances") and the treatment on the way to and in the filtration points are to be particularly condemned. The problems on the Russian side are compounded by the lack of military discipline and judicial sanctions, and of the rule of law in general. Especially deplorable on the side of the Chechen combatants was the recent terrorist attack in Budennovsk.
74. The Rapporteur, in conformance with Resolution No. 1055 (1995) which suspended the procedure concerning the Assembly's statutory opinion on Russia's request for membership, will not pronounce himself on that question.
75. However, the Sub-Committee, upon the proposition of the Rapporteur, gives the following recommendations to the warring parties:
A. Recommendations to both warring parties:
* Implement and respect a cease-fire and, under no circumstances, resume the fighting, and find a peaceful, political, negotiated solution to the conflict in Chechnya, which should include agreements on the return of all the internally displaced persons and refugees to their homes. It might be considered whether the organisation of a conference of regional Caucasian leaders, under the auspices of the President of the Russian Federation, could help to achieve this aim.
B. Recommendations to the Federal Russian authorities:
* renounce the policy of aerial bombardments and long-range artillery shelling of civilian/residential areas, and indiscriminate fire in general, as disproportionate use of violence in contradiction to the Geneva Conventions and its protocols;
* cease direct attacks on civilians and civilian targets, especially collective punishment of villagers in the course of disarmament;
* tighten military discipline and introduce the principle of accountability into the armed forces (especially for Ministry of the Interior and OMON-troops), in order to stop the widespread practices of robbery, looting, wanton destruction, extortion, beatings and arson and the isolated cases of torture, rape and killings;
* close the filtration points (and abolish the "accumulation points") and return to the ordinary judicial and penitentiary system as governed by the Russian Constitution and other Federal laws, and cease the arbitrary arrests, the beatings, the torture and the illegal, as well as too lengthy detentions connected with the filtration points;
* prosecute individual criminal acts committed during the last six months (such as those mentioned in the four points above) through the judicial system;
* treat captured fighters according to international humanitarian law (stop summary executions, for example, of "snipers" captured).
C. Recommendations to the Chechen combattants:
* cease using civilians as "human shields";
* stop terrorist attacks like the one in Budennovsk altogether;
* treat captured Russian soldiers according to international humanitarian law (stop mutilating, for example, the bodies of dead Russian soldiers).
76. The extreme suffering of the local population, the terrible situation of the refugees, and the high level of destruction of towns and villages effected by the war, which the Sub-Committee witnessed in Chechnya, once again made it completely clear that military actions can never be the solution to such a conflict.
77. The Sub-Committee, on the proposal of the Rapporteur, concludes that until these recommendations have been implemented by both warring parties, the human rights situation in Chechnya is unsatisfactory and unacceptable.
APPENDIX I
PROGRAMME
of the visit of the Sub-Committee on Human Rights to Moscow and Chechnya
(5-11 June 1995)
Sunday 4 June 1995
Arrival in Moscow
Overnight accommodation in Moscow
Monday 5 June 1995
10 am Meeting with Mr Mityukov, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation
11.30 am Meeting with members of the Russian Special Guest Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Mr Lukin, Mr Dzasokhov and Mr Aoulov)
1 pm Lunch (State Duma)
2.30 pm Meeting with members of the Council of the Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation (Mr Podoprigora and Mr Tarasenko)
6 pm Meeting in the Presidential Administration with Mr Filatov, Chief of Staff
7.30 pm Dinner in the President Hotel
Tuesday 6 June 1995
10 am Meeting with representatives of UNHCR, Mr Carpenter and Mr Jolles
11.30 am Meeting with the Moscow representative of ICRC, Mr Meyrat
1 pm Meeting with one of the Moscow representatives of IOM, Mr Sanikidze
2.15 pm Lunch (Council of the Federation)
4 pm Meeting with representatives of the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights
5.30 pm Meeting with representatives of Memorial and Human Rights Watch
Wednesday 7 June 1995
7.30 am Flight to Vladikavkaz
11.30 am Arrival in Vladikavkaz
12 noon Meeting with Mr Galazov, President of the Republic of North Ossetia, and with representatives of local authorities
1.30 pm Lunch at the Hotel
3 pm Flight to Assinovskaya (by helicopter)
4.30 pm Meeting with local inhabitants, short tour of the village
6.30 pm Flight to Vladikavkaz (by helicopter)
8 pm Dinner offered by the President of the North Ossetian Republic
Thursday 8 June 1995
8 am Flight to Mozdok (North Ossetia)
9 am Meeting with local authorities
10 am Meeting with refugees from Chechnya (unplanned)
11.30 am Meeting with representatives of an operational regiment of the Ministry of the Interior
12 noon Lunch / Visit to former filtration point "Lukovskaya railway station"
2 pm Departure to Nazran (Ingushetia)
3.30 pm Visit of two refugee camps
5.15 pm Meeting with representatives of ICRC, UNHCR, Médecins du monde and merlin
6 pm Meeting with Mr Aushev, President of the Republic of Ingushetia, and with representatives of local authorities
7.30 pm Departure to Vladikavkaz
8.15 pm Visit of the Federal Migration Service Centre in Vladikavkaz
9 pm Dinner at the Hotel
Friday 9 June 1995
8 am Flight to Grosny (by helicopter)
9.45 am Meeting with representatives of the Federal Forces (including Col.-General Kulikov, Lt.-General Nagorniy and General Shumov) and representatives of local authorities (including Mr Khadzhiyev, Mr Avturkhanov, Mr Surin and Mr Federov)
11 am Meeting with the OSCE mission
11.30 am Visit to Grosny filtration point
12.30 pm Lunch
1 pm Visit of the centre of Grosny
1.45 pm Flight to Shali from Grosny (by helicopter)
2.30 pm Meetings with local inhabitants
4.30 pm Flight to Znamenskoye from Shali (by helicopter)
5.15 pm Meetings with local inhabitants
7.15 pm Flight to Vladikavkaz
8.30 pm Dinner at the Hotel
Saturday 10 June 1995
7.45 am Meeting with Mr Coussidis, UNHCR representative in Vladikavkaz
9 am Flight to Nalchik
10.30 am Arrival in Nalchik (Kabardino-Balkaria)
11 am Visit of refugee camp in Nalchik
12 noon Meeting with Mr Kokov, President of the Republic of Kabardo-Balkaria, and with representatives of local authorities
2 pm Lunch
3 pm Cultural programme
6 pm Dinner in Nalchik
8 pm Departure to Moscow
Sunday 11 June 1995
10 am Meeting with Mr Kovalyov, Presidential Human Rights Commissioner
afternoon Departure to national capitals
APPENDIX II
Extract from:
The Opinion
of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights
on Russia's request for membership
in the light of the situation in Chechnya46
(Rapporteur: Mr BINDIG,
Germany, Socialist Group)
1. Introduction
a. Historical background
The Chechens are an indigenous Caucasian people closely related to the Ingush. Chechnya was only fully brought under the control of Tsarist Russia in 1876, after a series of bloody wars and uprisings lasting for nearly a century. The Chechens were renowned as a very military people and good fighters at the time: Purportedly, one Tsarist officer, when asked what he needed to win a battle in the Caucasus, answered "One Chechen".
After the Russian revolution, in 1918 a federation of North Caucasian Muslims, including the Chechens, made a bid for independence. Resistance to Soviet rule continued until 1921, when the mountain ("gorskaya") Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) was created. The Chechen part of the mountain ASSR received autonomous status a year later. In 1934, the autonomous Chechen region was united with the Ingush one, and became the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in 1936. However, in 1944 Stalin abolished the republic and deported all Chechens and Ingush as alleged collaborators (with the German invaders) to Central Asia, which caused great suffering and considerable loss of human life.
Only in 1957 were both peoples rehabilitated and allowed to return, and the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was reestablished, albeit with a smaller territory. The area became an important oil-producing region and was heavily industrialised under Soviet rule.
b. The events leading up to the current situation
In October 1991, the Chechen part of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR declared its independence from the Russian Federation, under the leadership of former Air Force General Dzhokar Dudayev. The Russian government refused to recognise Chechen independence. Dudayev went on to win Chechnya's first presidential election, which the Russian government condemned. An attempt of Russian Interior Ministry troops to "restore order" in Chechnya failed in November 1991. In the summer of 1992, President Dudayev closed the Chechen parliament.
In the spring of 1994, Russian and Chechen officials reportedly agreed to negotiations to work out Chechen-Russian differences. However, by the summer of 1994, after a series of bloody hijackings involving the Chechen mafia, the Russian government denounced Dudayev and started supporting the Chechen anti-Dudayev opposition. Dudayev prevailed in the autumn's heavy fighting between the opposition and the government in Chechnya. Russia openly intervened on 11 December 1994, commencing air attacks against the capital Grozny and moving in ground forces three weeks later.
2. Treatment of the civilian population
One month later, the fighting still rages on and it is unclear as to who is on the winning side (according to news reports, the Russians have conquered the northern districts of the capital, but the Chechens hold the southern ones). What has become clear though, is who is on the losing side: the civilian population of Chechnya. Although at the beginning of the conflict, some Russian officers reportedly defied orders to target civilians, the Russian air force seems to have shelled civilian areas indiscriminately from the very beginning.
According to news reports and research by human rights organisations, Russian forces destroyed at least two hospitals in Chechnya and part of a third, an orphanage and several market areas. Residential areas have been bombed by the Russians from the air, a railroad car carrying civilians has been attacked by Russian ground forces, and civilians - as well as journalists - have been killed by stray bullets fired by both sides. Injured civilians who made it across the border to Dagestan report being attacked by the Russian Army on the way, especially by low-flying combat aircraft. Hundreds of civilians have died, more have been wounded. The number of refugees is estimated at several hundreds of thousands.
Reporting Committee: Political Affairs Committee (Doc 7372)
Committee for opinon: Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Reference to Committee: Resolution 1055 (1995) and Order No. 506 (1995)
Opinion approved by the committee on 11 September 1995
Secretaries to the committee: Mr Plate, Ms Bakardjieva and Ms Kleinsorge
2 2AS/Jur (1995) 22, page 23.
3 3A special police force - the abbreviation stands for "Special Mission Militia Detachment".
4 4AS/Bur/Russia (1994) 7, Bureau of the Assembly: Report on the conformity of the legal order of the Russian Federation with Council of Europe standards prepared by MM. Bernhardt, Trechsel, Weitzel and Ermacora, 28 September 1994, p. 85.
5 5The delegation included: Mr López Henares (Spain, EPP), Chairperson, Mr Severin (Romania, SOC), Vice-Chairperson, Mr Bindig (Germany, SOC), Rapporteur, Mr Bartodziej (Poland, EPP), Mr Columberg (Switzerland, EPP), Mrs Gelderblom-Lankhout (Netherlands, LDR), Mrs Jaani (Estonia, EPP), Mr Solé Tura (Spain, SOC), and Mr Plate and Mrs Kleinsorge, Secretariat.
6 6For more details on the Sub-Committee's programme, see Appendix I.
7 7 These proposals were expressed by the Rapporteur in Paris on 29 May 1995, and repeated by different members of the Sub-Committee and the Secretariat both in Strasbourg, Moscow and throughout the visit.
8 8The Sub-Committee would like to apologize to the representatives of Médecins sans frontičres (MSF) who came to the OSCE mission in Grosny. Unfortunately, the Sub-Committee was told of their presence too late (on their way out), and had to choose whether to talk to MSF or visit Grosny filtration camp. The whole incident was very unfortunate.
9 9 Of the estimated pre-war population of over 400,000.
10 10 This Joint Inspection Committee on Human Rights, which will be touched upon once more in this report in the Chapter on the rule of law, does not seem to have any power at all. I personally spoke with its Chairman, a Russian, who had not registered one single complaint of mistreatment in a filtration point at that time (sic).
11 11Available from the Secretariat of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.
12 12In spite of the small size of the Chechen Republic, for example, Serzhen-Yurt, reportedly only 7 km away from Shali (which was taken by the Russian forces at the end of March), was taken only two months later.
13 13To be elaborated on in the chapter on human rights abuses.
14 14For a more detailed explanation, please see Doc. 7231, pages 3 and 4.
15 15General Kulikov denies that a policy of bombing and shelling of villages exists. According to him, since the beginning of June (sic!) aerial bombing and long-range artillery shelling was only used against illegal armed gangs situated outside of villages and towns. If a shell hit a village, "this was exceptional and unplanned".
16 16According to Article 13 of the Second Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions.
17 17Human Rights Watch/Helsinki: Russia - Partisan war in Chechnya on the eve of the WWII commemoration, May 1995, page 9.
18 18The Russian NGO Memorial plans to publish an extensive report on the massacre at the end of this month. Memorial (provisionally) puts the number of civilian casualties at 94.
19 19The name of the soldier is known to the Sub-Committee. However, as a principle the names of witnesses will not be given in this report, to avoid possible reprisals. This footnote thus applies also to other witnesses.
20 20In Assinovskaya, several women complained of a kind of daytime curfew: they were not allowed to leave their houses during the day to work on the local Kolkhoz farm. One woman testified: "But if we're not meant to leave our houses, how can we dig up our potatoes?"
21 21Human Rights Watch/Helsinki: Russia - Partisan war in Chechnya on the eve of the WWII commemoration, May 1995, page 17.
22 22The role of the SOBR-troops (a kind of special rapid reaction force) is unclear. In Assinovskaya, since they "took over" the village on 19 May 1995 the situation apparently improved - no more men were being taken out of their houses at night, and there was less looting and arson. In other places, however, we heard complaints against SOBR-troops in the same vain as against SpetsNaz and OMON-troops. This confusion is made even more difficult by the fact that many witnesses can themselves only differentiate between regular Army, Ministry of the Interior and OMON-troops (all three types of troops wear more-or-less distinctive uniforms and badges); some witnesses do not even manage such a differentiation.
23 23For example, in Assinovskaya the local pharmacy was first looted and then smashed up, so there were now no medicines left.
24 24Two particularly moving cases of "disappearances" were the following: The son of one 80-year old woman in Assinovskaya had been arrested and taken away by soldiers on 17 May 1995 for not having a local residence permit, and not even the local officials could find out his whereabouts. The second case was that of three young men - not armed, non-combatants - from Shali (Sh. Tashukhadjiev, A. Suleimanov and A. Domayev), who disappeared on 9 May 1995 together with the white car they were driving; the parents presume that they were stopped by Russian soldiers and taken to a filtration point, but no official information has reached them.
25 25Some women in Znamenskoye testified to the killing of a Chechen mother and child in Znamenskoye's main street a short time ago. A column of military vehicles had been driving through the town in the early evening, when an armoured car suddenly veered out and drove straight into the mother with her child walking on the side of the street. It was unclear whether this was an accident (with a drunken driver) or done on purpose.
26 26Human rights defense centre Memorial:... Moscow 1995.
27 27One very graphic example was given to the Sub-Committee in Assinovskaya, where a husband was arrested in his own home at two o'clock at night for "verification of identity". His documents which the man proffered to the special troops were taken away by one of them with the words "you won't be needing these any more". He was then taken to an accumulation point, and from there to a filtration point "because he had no documents".
28 28In at least one case we heard of, the eyes of the detainee were bound and he was asked to sign a paper. When he refused, he was beaten. In the end he signed. The paper later turned out to be his confession that he was one of Mr Dudayev's fighters.
29 29Some in the vicinity, such as Vladikavkaz (North Ossetia), Stavropol and Pyatigorsk, but others as far afield as Chelyabinsk (in the Ural mountains).
30 30Memorial report, page 12 and 13 (Assinovskaya and Shali).
31 31Ibid, page 17.
32 32These cars were green so-called "Stolypin"-waggons. On one side they had no windows at all, on the other side iron-barred ones.
33 33Interestingly, the station personnel informed us that the waggons themselves had been "on loan" from Rostov, and that the waggons had been changed a few times during the existence of the FP. The guarding personnel had also changed every four to six weeks - the (Ministry of the Interior) guards had been on "mission" or detachment.
34 34Nevertheless, one small scar remained on the man's face, above the brow. The son of one woman we spoke to in Assinovskaya had been beaten in a similar fashion; according to his mother, "a piece of flesh was missing from above his brow when he came back".
35 35The Sub-Committee heard rumours that Mr Dudayev was stopping these live against live exchanges of prisoners precisely because he felt it was contrary to the agreements that he was receiving ordinary Chechen civilians in return for captured Russian soldiers.
36 36Such a length of detention is illegal according to Russian law. The Constitution foresees a maximum of 48 hours in police custody and pre-trial detention, then the detainee must be brought before a judge. The (illegal) decree of President Yeltsin of 14 June 1994 on "Urgent measures aimed at protecting the population against banditry and other manifestations of organised crime" lengthened the detention period to 30 days, but 2 months is to be found in no text at all.
37 37We heard reports of cases when Chechens would extend blood feuds also to their Russian neighbours, thus affording them a small measure of protection.
38 38Human Rights Watch/Helsinki: Russia - War in Chechnya: New Report from the field, January 1995, page 10-11.
39 39Ibid, page 11.
40 40The Rapporteur considers some of the measures taken in reaction to the terrorist attack as disproportionate and uncalled for.
41 41One soldier's mother who had herself visited several places where Chechen fighters held captured Russian soldiers in January, looking for her son, testified that the soldiers were even getting the same food as the fighters, and that the relationship between the fighters and the prisoners seemed quite good (in view of the circumstances). Mr Kovalyov himself, as well as the ICRC, had visited similar places and confirmed these observations (for example, there were no allegations of systematic beatings or torture).
42 42Mr Kovalyov pointed out that, on the contrary, the Chechen administration subsequently took measures to protect wounded Russian soldiers in their hospitals to avoid further attacks.
43 43Especially since the military prosecutor's office seems to work more efficiently when it comes to prosecuting "voluntary surrender in war time" (Article 264 of the Russian Criminal Code). According to information received from several human rights organisation, Lieutenant M. Yashenko and his colleague A. Bulkin were arrested on 14 April 1995 under this charge. I ask myself how such a charge can be applied ("in war time"), when not even an emergency situation has been declared in Chechnya, let alone a war.
44 44This is in addition to the more than 50.000 Ingush refugees who fled the - as of yet, still unsolved - conflict in North Ossetia in 1992, and who are still waiting for security guarantees to be able to return home.
45 45Only in Nalchik (Kabardino-Balkaria) did we see acceptable conditions in a refugee camp which was situated in a former sanatorium and now housed 178 people. In Nazran, where there are many more refugees, they have to be accommodated in railway cars or on a former animal farm.