Chechnyan people’s right to live in safety from inhuman treatment and extermination

Doc. 8961

1 February 2001

Chechen people’s right to live in safety from inhuman treatment and extermination

Motion for a resolution

presented by Mr Landsbergis and others

This motion has not been discussed in the Assembly and commits only

the members who have signed it

Mass murders and other inhuman treatment of civilians, harsh destruction of cities and villages in Chechnya by Russian military in 1994-1996 and again from 1999, were and are often justified basically by the fact that Chechnya was a conquest of the Russian empire in the second half of the 19^th century and remains under Russian sovereignty without any fundamental right to self-determination and independence.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe disagrees with such a stance and calls for consideration of what is more acceptable and valuable at the beginning of the Third Millennium; either to permit human beings to live in their homeland or to rule a devastated territory turned into desert and ruins, the site of death and tears.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe reiterates its deep concern on such great suffering of people in that distant place of our continent. Therefore, it firmly promulgates an opinion that supremacy and sovereignty, if even considered lawful in the past on some territory with its prevailing indigenous population, as it is in Chechnya’s case, does not prove itself when expressed, not by care and protection of human beings but, on the contrary, serves for a consistent violation of human rights, inhuman treatment and genocide-like extermination of that population by a historical rules claiming to be “sovereign” over it.

Signed : ¹

Landsbergis, Lithuania, EDG

Baumel, France, EDG

Björck, Sweden, EDG

Bartoš, Czech Republic, EDG

Jackson, United Kingdom, EDG

Knight, United Kingdom, EDG

Krzaklewski, Poland, EPP/CD

Olekas, Lithuania, SOC

Ouzky, Czech Republic, EDG

Ragnarsdottir, Iceland, EDG

Sinka, Latvia, EDG

Stankevič, Lithuania, LDR

Vahtre, Estonia, EPP/CD

Wojcik, Poland, EPP/CD

¹ SOC: Socialist Group

EPP/CD: Group of the European People’s Party

EDG: European Democratic Group

LDR : Liberal, Democratic and Reformers’ Group

UEL: Group of the Unified European Left

NR: not registered in a group