Background to the Geneva Meeting
China
Chechnya
East Timor
Uzbekistan
Sierra Leone
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
Sudan
Colombia
Haiti Documents
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Joint statement by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Chechnya
Oral Intervention : Item 4 of the Agenda
Delivered: 11 April 2000
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have provided the international community with mounting evidence of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed by Russian forces in Chechnya. Last Wednesday, the High Commissioner for Human Rights gave the Commission a detailed account of allegations of gross human rights violations such as mass killings, extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, torture including rape, and pillage. She had no doubt that the scale of these serious reports warranted international concern and called on the Commission to offer a credible response.
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Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are convinced that a national Commission of Investigation as proposed recently will not be sufficient to establish the truth and hold accountable the perpetrators of war crimes and other violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
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Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch welcome the reaffirmation by the High Commissioner that "the primary responsibility for addressing human rights violations (...) rests with the Russian authorities". However, both organizations firmly believe that a national Commission of Inquiry into these allegations is not the effective response that victims of human rights violations deserve and that the rule of law requires, for the following reasons:
- The response from the Russian authorities so far to credible allegations of human rights violations does not constitute a serious attempt to deal with the grave human rights situation in the Chechen Republic. The inquiries by the newly established Special Representative on Protecting Human Rights and Freedoms in Chechnya to the office of the military prosecutor about alleged war crimes involving three specific massacres led him to say: "I just can't get the answers I'm looking for." The Russian military procurator told Human Rights Watch in early March that he never heard of the 60 summary executions by Russian soldiers documented in the Aldi district of Grozny. Yet ten days later he had already concluded his investigations and found Russian soldiers had not been involved - a conclusion contradicted by many eyewitnesses. The Russian authorities publicly denounced Amnesty International's findings that secret "filtration camps" existed and denied that detainees in Chechnya were tortured.
- The government refused to permit the High Commissioner access to detention places where torture and ill-treatment have reportedly taken place. This reveals two things: first, the emptiness of the government's rhetoric of transparency, and second, the authorities' lack of political will to allow effective investigations into the government's human rights record. The obstruction of the High Commissioner's visit makes it extremely likely that national investigators will at least meet the same obstacles when seeking access, information and cooperation from the Russian authorities.
- The lack of real commitment by the Russian authorities to satisfactorily investigate human rights abuses and prosecute those guilty is borne out by the pattern of inadequate investigations into allegations of human rights violations and the culture of impunity that prevailed during the first Chechen conflict in 1994 - 1996. While some investigations have indeed been carried out, no prosecutions or convictions for the grave human rights violations committed at the time have been reported, and accountability never materialised.
For all these reasons, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are convinced that a national Commission of Investigation as proposed recently will not be sufficient to establish the truth and hold accountable the perpetrators of war crimes and other violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Our organizations firmly believe that only an international Commission of Investigation established by the United Nations will provide the necessary resources and strong guarantees for a thorough, independent and transparent process of systematic collection of evidence. It may also foster the important process of national investigations and prosecutions.
The rule of law and the imperative of justice demand no less: the Commission cannot escape its responsibility to insist on a credible and commensurate response to the massive human rights abuses which have been committed in Chechnya, and a UN-established Commission of Inquiry is the prerequisite.
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