CHECHNYA LINKS LIBRARY

Humanitarian workers in North Caucasus fear punitive measures

By Timur Aliyev

NAZRAN, Ingushetia – Workers of humanitarian missions in Chechnya and Ingushetia fear punitive measures against themselves and their organizations. They have spoken of this in private conversations with Prague Watchdog’s correspondent.

The grounds for their increased apprehension are the recent events at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo-2 Airport, where two workers of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) were refused entry to Russia by customs control.

On the evening of April 8 an IRC worker who is a citizen of Azerbaijan was refused entry, while on April 9 Antoine Duplouy, head of the IRC Mission in the Northern Caucasus, was unable to get through.

One of PW’s contacts supposes that the punitive measures taken against IRC workers were a consequence of the IRC’s having won legal proceedings in Nazran against the regional directorate of the Federal Security Service (FSB). These proceedings were instituted by the FSB directorate itself, which considered that the organization had committed an administrative violation by not providing the FSB with lists of its workers.

The situation which has developed around the Czech organization “People In Need” (PIN) is well known. After the shoot-out that took place in December 2004 at a building in Grozny with a relative of one of the organization’s female workers, the Russian press unleashed a flood of compromising material (kompromat) against the organization.

Thus, at the end of March an article entitled “Are the sub-machine guns of the UN shooting at our people?” was published in the Russian weekly Argumenty i Fakty, in which the Czech organization was indirectly accused of transporting narcotics and sponsoring guerrillas.

Moreover, in the words of PW’s sources, “gentle pressure” is being brought to bear on the humanitarian missions in Ingushetia – since February constant checks have been conducted in the organizations’ offices, involving sanitary commissions and fire inspections.

The humanitarian workers also fear that their work accreditation in Russia will not be extended, as is the case with two workers of the Polish Humanitarian Organisation (Polska Akcja Humanitarna, PHO), which also conducts its activity in Ingushetia and Chechnya.

In the run-up to the visit to the North Caucasus of a delegation of the European Commission, PW’s sources place emphasis on the fact that many of the humanitarian organizations in Chechnya and Ingushetia are the European Commission's implementing partners.

Translated by David McDuff.

(MD/T,B)