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Pamfilova pays visit to Chechen refugee camps in Inghushetia

Timur Aliyev, North Caucasus – On September 4 a delegation of Russian human rights defenders led by Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of President Putin's Human Rights Commission, paid a visit to the refugee camps in Ingushetia, primarily the Bella camp. According to Pamfilova, their aim was “to see for themselves what the current situation is in the camps.”

Other participants included Lyudmila Alexeyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and Svetlana Gannushkina, chairwoman of the human rights association “Civic Assistance” ("Grazhdanskoye sodeystviye").

The delegation spent about two hours at Bella, talking to its occupants, who complained about being harassed by the Migration Service. “We used to live in the Satsita camp, then we moved to the temporary accommodation center in the Sernovodskoye village, and went on to Grozny, where my husband was then killed. So I returned to Bella, where my daughter lived. But now they are expelling us from here as well,” lamented Zuleykhan Magomadova.

And this was but one out of 50 similar complaints the delegation heard. They were also asked to deliver letters, signed by many occupants of the camp, to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, asking that they solve the situation in Bella. “We are afraid of a similar fate befalling us as it did the people in the Iman camp.

The delegation also visited the Avtodor camp, close to Karabulak, where for over a month its occupants have been threatened and asked to leave the camp.

At the end of their first day in the North Caucasus region, they met with representatives of various Chechen human rights organizations. The delegation was interested in the stance of local human rights defenders on the Moscow Helsinki Group's plan to send observers to the Kremlin-organized presidential election in Chechnya.

Chechen representatives present at the meeting sharply dismissed the Group's endeavor. “We only have to monitor human rights violations; if we monitored the election itself, then we would effectively become actors in this farce that is called a presidential election,” said Ruslan Badalov, chairman of the Chechen Committee of National Salvation.

(H/E,T)