Human Rights Violations in Chechnya
 A Child in Chechnya Recently, news coverage of the Russia-Chechnya War has centered around the hostage situation in Moscow. Chechen rebels took over 700 musical guests hostage in a theater, and more then 100 ended up dead. The Chechen "Terrorists" (as they are now being called) only killed two people -- 116 were killed by Russian law enforcement. Even though the majority of the Russian civilians were killed by Russian soldiers, there's no denying that what the Chechen rebels did was wrong, but what many people aren't seeing is why the Chechens felt that they had to go to this level of terrorism to stop the war. The purpose of this website is to raise awareness about the injustices put upon innocent Chechens by the Russian army. The Russian Federation Army, under Vladimir Putin has been running an intense "antiterrorist operation" in Chechnya for over three years now. The army describes these operations as "cleansing" in order to restore order in Chechnya. The "sweep" operations are offially defined as checks on residency permits and identity documents, but it is becoming readily apparent that the military is doing much more than that. Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter, saw some of the attrocities with her own eyes. What she described in the village of Mesker-Yurt are beyond horriffic. The military established their headquarters on the outskirts of Mesker-Yurt on May 21, 2002, after herding the town's 2,000 inhabitants into their houses. The soldiers then proceeded to take every male over the age of 12 from their homes, looting them in the process. The men were taken to a mosque for processing-to check if they were linked to the Chechen independance fighters. After a sit down strike around the mosque, the soldiers agreed to publicly compare the men's names with the federal forces' lists of suspected rebels. Each man was checked twice against the computer records, but the soldiers must have been dissapointed by the outcome because they later announced that everyone must be processed again, but this time, not by computers. In a process that is reminiscent of the Salem witch trials, local informers, hidden behind darkened glass "identified" guerrilla fighters and their sympathizers. Those they fingered were detained and sent to the filtration unit. At the filtration unit, the men were tortured and many were killed. A widow named Malika tells of her son Adam’s death: he was twice cleared by the computers, but because of the word of an informer, his body was returned to his mother with his scull split in two, fingers ripped from his hands, and cigarette burns all over his body. On top of all that, the russian federaly demanded that Malika sign a paper stating that she had no complaints and then confiscated all her family photo albums so that she is now left without even a picture of her eldest son. One man, a veteran of the Soviet Army, was taken with his 19 year old nephew to the filtration unit. The federally threatened to crucify the man, but were content to only nail him by his hands. Then, after the man begged the troops not to beat his nephew, they decided to stuff explosives in the boys pockets. He will never be able to have children, and he was one of the lucky ones who was exposed to explosives. The military has been trying to cover their tracks by leaving no traces of bodies. Some families have little more than a heel or a hand left of their loved ones to bury. | Violations of the Declaration of Human Rights
|
© 2002 Marisa, Kristi, Bridget, Barbara -- Seton Catholic High School, Christian Morality.
contact us
