Chechen human rights defender subjects Russia’s President to harsh criticism By Umalt Chadayev
NORTH CAUCASUS – Aslambek Apayev, Chairman of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Internally Displaced Persons and Moscow Helsinki Group expert on the Northern Caucasus, has accused Russia’s President of “connivance”.
Aslambek Apayev, who for the past several years has chaired the human rights organization and who is an expert on the Northern Caucasus considers that arbitrariness and violence by members of the security services against residents of a number of regions of the Southern Federal District are being exercised with the knowledge of the country’s leadership. The responsibility for what is happening in the view of human rights activist falls primarily on the incumbent President of Russia.
"Recent events in Ingushetia (the dispersal of a protest rally in the city of Nazran, the abduction and beating of the head of the Memorial Human Rights Centre and three journalists, the murder of civilians and the unlawful detention of local residents) are, I believe, a premeditated and deliberate action, possibly staged in anticipation of the presidential elections in Russia. Certain forces are trying to create another hotbed of tension in the North Caucasus in order to further their aim of unleashing fresh slaughter here," he said.
"A few months ago I appealed to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in an open letter which asked him to influence the situation and take the necessary steps to rein in the arbitrary violence that is being practised by the siloviki in Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan. At the time, I thought that the Russian President was in the dark about what is happening here, and that the people in charge of the law enforcement bodies were deliberately misleading him, but I think I was mistaken. Therefore I have decided to issue a[nother] statement to that effect, addressed to the Head of State," Apayev told PW’s correspondent.
More details are available in our Russian report. (Translation by DM) (T) RELATED ARTICLES:
· Human rights defender and TV crew kidnapped from Nazran hotel and beaten (PW, 24.11.2007, in Russian only)
· Tension continues in Ingushetia (PW, 23.11.2007)
· Apayev's first appeal to Putin (September 2007, Apiam.ru)
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