Letter to the editors of
Some time ago I visited
The authorities claim that here in
It
has been over twenty years since on their behalf the Kazakh Association
for Development of Culture of Chechen and Ingush Nations 'Vainakh' has
been preparing a suit to be filed with the International Court on
prosecuting the political and military leadership of Russia as war
criminals.
Ahmet
Muradov, Chairman of The Vainakh is convinced: «Since the very
beginning it has been outright genocide of the Chechen people and not
an antiterrorist operation. The organizers of this slaughter must stand
trial!»
I'm sure his fellow countrymen will have something to say during that trial.
About 1.3 million were living in
Not
everybody out of that million was killed. Putin managed to do what even
Comrade Stalin could not achieve. Putin didn't have to put the entire
nation in freight railcars – the people left by themselves.
«Mainly
the defenseless people are getting killed: women, children and the
elderly. The young men can defend themselves – they take up arms and go
to the mountains to take revenge for their sisters, their brothers,
their fathers and their mothers who were killed. Anybody would have
done the same thing – they are forced to become militants», Zulla T.
tells.
Zulla
lost her 70-year-old husband and her elderly brother. They were not
even able to lift an assault rifle. Younger and stronger relatives will
have to do it now.
Russian
generals are now in geometric series multiplying the number of those
who wish to pull a trigger and shoot a Russian soldier. Their children
are not dying in this ruthless war and they themselves will not crawl
out of their headquarters. They keep 'icing in the outhouses' without
looking back. And peaceful civilians are the ones dying in these
'outhouses' - the 'militants' forgot the delights of civilization long
time ago. Mountains became their refuge. Russian soldiers are afraid of
going up there, and refugees tell that Russians take their own
helplessness out on the residents of mountain villages.
Russian
leadership was naming the desire to put an end to selling humans as one
of the main reasons to start the war. At the same time Russian generals
were the ones who actually started that business. Here is what Ahmet M.
told us in
«Recall
the year of 1994. Dudayev (first Chechen President) had many Russian
POWs. And he returned them to their mothers – with no conditions or
ransoms. Well, and the first ones to start selling people were Russian
military commanders – they would release Chechen prisoners only for
ransom. They were the first to take hostages too: [Russian general]
Rokhlin seized the
Now the human-trading business has been put into production in
In
Not
only Chechen locals get caught. Russians captured one of the relative
of Suniat, the person we talked to. He was a citizen of
«Four
of my relatives were already buried without their heads», an elderly
lady Ms. Aguyeva is crying (she became a foster mother for dozens of
refugees that she put up in her house) - «I was told that there was
nobody to pay for them. And then they say that Chechens are thugs...»
In this war Russian troops are noted for virtually total mass pillaging and banditry.
«When
the soldiers entered our village, they wanted to blow up a big empty
house on the outskirts. All of the women started persuading them not to
and telling that the owners would be back after the war. Then the
soldiers started carrying valuables out of the house in big bags that
they prepared in advance, like the ones market sellers usually carry
with them. Women started getting outraged: «What are you doing? You are pillaging!» The commander threatened to arrest them for being uncooperative. And in the
«You
can't stop this war anymore», - the refugees grind their teeth and say
goodbye to their Homeland. Right now each Chechen has lost at least one
loved one. The war is becoming Patriotic. Ahmet M. believes that all of
this was deliberately provoked by the Russian leadership:
«They
say that all of it is because of the oil pipeline. But a hundred years
ago there was no damn pipeline. Not even highways were here two hundred
years ago. But the war has been going on here forever. And the mistake
that prior rulers of
When I was preparing this material, I came across the report by Chairman of the 'Lawyers of
The
report mentioned that during the first year of Russian invasion and
Russian war crimes against Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, compared to
which Milosevic's crimes in the Balkans are nothing, 24,000 Chechen
children out of 392,000 became orphans, over 6,000 became crippled and
at least 16,000 were killed. Over 30% of Chechen children suffered
physical and mental traumas and need immediate rehabilitation.
Gravest crimes of Putin's regime in
Nurlan Kazymbekov,
For Kavkaz-Center
Department of Correspondence,