PACE committee calls for international war crimes tribunal for Chechnya if ‘climate of impunity’ continuesParis, 3 March - If the efforts to bring to justice those guilty of human rights abuses are not intensified, and the climate of impunity in the Chechen Republic prevails, the international community should consider setting up an ad hoc tribunal to try war crimes and crimes against humanity in the republic, according to the Assembly’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.
In a draft resolution adopted during a meeting in Paris, the committee said everyone involved had “failed dismally” to protect the people of the Chechen Republic from human rights abuses, and said the main reason why both Russian soldiers and Chechen fighters went on committing such abuses to this day was that “they nearly always get away with it”.
The report, by Rudolf Bindig (Germany, SOC), will be debated by the plenary Assembly during its spring session in Strasbourg (31 March-4 April 2003).
Provisional version of the draft report. (T) |
