Chechen human rights workers demand return of Aslan Maskhadov’s body for burialTimur Aliyev
NAZRAN, Ingushetia - NGOs plan to appeal in open letters to the OSCE leadership and Russian President Vladimir Putin with a demand that Aslan Maskhadov’s body be returned to his family for burial.
The human rights workers also plan to start a campaign to collect signatures in support of this initiative; the signatures will be appended to the letters later.
The initiative was announced by representatives of Chechnya’s human rights and non-governmental organizations at the Round Table which took place in Nazran on April 16.
It will be recalled that according to the official version Aslan Maskhadov was killed in the Chechen village of Tolstoy-Yurt on March 8. Since then, Russian federal forces say they have been holding his body for forensic tests. Howevcr, even though the tests are now over, the Russian authorities refuse to return the body to his relatives.
According to the historian Murad Nashkhoyev, this is not the first time in Chechen history that the Russian authorities have refused to return a body for burial. “We must not allow similar things to happen in future. After all, Chechen traditions demand that a Chechen be buried in his native land,” Nashkhoyev says.
Translated by David McDuff. (MD/A,B)
DISCUSSION FORUM
|
