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Russia/Chechnya -- February
5: A Day of Slaughter in Novye Aldi
On February 5, 2000, Russian forces engaged in widespread killing,
arson, rape and looting in Aldi. The victims included an eighty-two-year-old
woman, and a one-year-old-boy with his twenty-nine-year-old mother,
who was eight months pregnant. The 46-page report criticizes
the failure of the Russian authorities to undertake a credible investigation
into the massacre and provide adequate protection for witnesses.
Human Rights Watch previously documented the events in Aldi in a
February 23 press release, but the new report documents in detail the killings
of forty of the victims, along with six cases of rape, and the widespread
arson and looting of civilian homes. Russian authorities have themselves
admitted that special riot police units (in Russian, OMON) from the city
of St. Petersburg and Riazan province were in Aldi on February 5. The military
procurator passed the case over to the Grozny civilian procurator, stating
that OMON units do not fall under his supervision. Three civilian procurators
are currently investigating the killings. The failure to address
what amounts to war crimes in Aldi directly contradicts Putin's statement
on May 29 that "all violations of the law in Chechnya will be stamped out
in the most severe fashion regardless of who committed them." (D1208)
6/00, 43pp, $5.00
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Russia/Chechnya
-- "No Happiness Remains:" Civilian Killings, Pillage, and Rape in Alkhan-yurt,
Chechnya
Russian soldiers went on a rampage in the Chechen village of Alkhan-Yurt
in December 1999, looting and burning dozens of homes and summarily executing
at least fourteen civilians, according to the 32-page report. The report
criticizes Russia's military and political leadership for failing to investigate
the crime, and charges that Russia's military command is complicit to the
abuses. The events in Alkhan-Yurt were previously revealed in Human Rights
Watch press releases, but the new report provides a more comprehensive
account of the massacre and its victims. When the allegations first emerged,
the Russian military and political leadership dismissed them out of hand,
claiming that Chechen rebels had unleashed an "information war." Then,
as evidence of the killing mounted, the military procuracy was forced
to open a criminal investigation into the events. However, this investigation:
it focused only on the period leading up to and including the seizure of
the village by Russian forces, although the rampage took place in the two
following weeks. The military procuracy told Human Rights Watch that it
had closed the investigation and no one was charged.
(D1205) 4/00, 35pp, $5.00
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Russia/Chechnya
Civilian Killings in Staropromyslovski District of Grozny
Russian soldiers summarily executed at least thirty-eight civilians
in the Staropromyslovski district of Grozny, Chechnya, between late December
and mid-January, according to testimony taken by Human Rights Watch. Most
of the victims were women and elderly men, and all appear to have been
deliberately shot by Russian soldiers at close range. Russian soldiers
alsocommitted many other abuses in the district, including looting and
destroying civilian property and forcing residents of the town to risk
sniper fire to recover the bodies of fallen Russian soldiers. Six men from
the district who were last seen in Russian custody "disappeared" during
this same period and remain unaccounted for. More than a dozen interviews
with survivors, eyewitnesses, and family members of the dead revealed detailed
information about the killings, which occurred in fourteen separate incidents.
Human Rights Watch also received allegations of at least a dozen additional
deaths which occurred in the same period. Human Rights Watch is currently
investigating these allegations.
(D1201) 2/00, 18 pp, $3.00
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Confessions At Any Cost: Police
Torture in Russia
The Russian police routinely torture people in custody in order
to force them to confess, Human Rights Watch charges in this report. Russian
courts commonly accept these forced confessions as grounds for conviction,
and federal and local governments do not recognize police torture
as a problem, the report says. With only a few exceptions,
Russian police are not prosecuted, or even reprimanded, for committing
torture, although the practice clearly contravenes Russian and international
law. The 196-page report, "Confessions At Any Cost: Police Torture in Russia,"
is based on a two-year study, including more than fifty interviews with
torture victims in five regions across Russia. Dozens of lawyers, former
police officers, judges, and others were also interviewed for the report.Some
Russian experts estimate that 50 percent of police detainees are subject
to torture or ill-treatment. The most common form of torture involves prolonged
beatings, with punches, kicks, and blows from a
nightstick commonly aimed at the victim's head, back, kidneys, legs,
and heels. The police also use electric shock. Two people interviewed by
Human Rights Watch jumped out the window of the police station and were
seriously injured rather than be subjected to further electric shock.
ISBN 1-56432-244-0
(2440), 11/99, 196 pp., $15.00
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Abandoned
to the State: Cruelty and Neglect in Russian Orphanages
December 1998
(1916)
This report documents how, from the moment the state assumes their
care, orphans in Russia---of whom 95 percent still have a living parent---are
exposed to shocking levels of cruelty and neglect. Infants classified as
disabled are segregated into "lying-down" rooms, where they are changed
and fed but are bereft of stimulation and essential medical care. Those
who are officially diagnosed as "imbetsil" or "idiot" at age four are condemned
to life in little more than a warehouse, where they may be restrained in
cloth sacks, tethered by a limb to furniture, denied stimulation, training,
and education. Some lie half-naked in their own filth, and are neglected,
sometimes to the point of death. The "normal" children---those deemed to
be "educable"---are subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
by institution staff. They may be beaten, locked in freezing rooms for
days at a time, abused physically, denied adequate education and training.
It is deplorable that the very state that is charged with the care and
nurture of more than 600,000 children "without parental care," condemns
untold numbers to an archipelago of grim institutions. Abandoned children
suffer a lifelong stigma that ultimately robs them of fundamental economic,
social, civil and political rights guaranteed by international treaties.
Human Rights Watch calls on the Russian Federation, which has long prided
itself on the education of its children, to stop all medical personnel
from pressing parents to institutionalize newborns with various disabilities,
and reallocate resources spent on institutions to develop humane, non-discriminatory
alternatives.
(1916) 12/98, 228 pp., ISBN 1-56432-191-6, $15.00
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Russian Federation: Ethnic
Discrimination in Southern Russia
Ethnic discrimination in the Russian Federation has persisted and perhaps
even worsened since the break-up of the Soviet Union. The government has
failed to combat discrimination and is in many ways responsible for perpetuating
discriminatory practices. While this is evident in much of Russia, it is
striking in Stavropol and Krasnodar, two provinces in southern Russia that
make up part of the North Caucasus region. A common form of state-sponsored
discrimination in these provinces is police harassment of ethnic Caucasians
through selective enforcement of residence requirements (propiska) and
mandatory registration of visitors. Police selectively enforce these rules,
sometimes together with Cossack units -- paramilitary organizations composed
of ethnic Slavs that in southern Russia operate with government sanction
-- through arbitrary identity checks on the street, on highways, and in
homes, during which victims are often forced to pay bribes and sometimes
are beaten and detained.
(D1008)8/98, 38 pp., $5.00
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Too Little: Too Late
State Response to Violence Against Women
In March 1995, Human Rights Watch released Neither Jobs Nor Justice,
a report documenting widespread employment discrimination on the basis
of sex that was practiced, condoned, and tolerated by the Russian government.
The report also described how Russian law enforcement agencies routinely
denied women their right to equal protection of the law by failing to investigate
and prosecute violence against women. In April 1996, we returned to Russia
to further research this problem. This report examines in-depth the state
response to sexual violence outside the home as well as to sexual and other
violence by intimate partners inside the home. Violence against women is
a pervasive problem in Russia. According to government statistics, nearly
11,000 women reported rape or attempted rape in 1996; the government simply
does not gather statistics on women assaulted or killed by their partners.
Yekaterina Lakhova, President Yeltsin's advisor on women's issues, has
estimated that 14,000 women in Russia are killed by husbands or family
members each year. These statistics, however, by no means document the
extent of the problem of gender-based violence. According to women's rights
activists, only about 5 to 10 percent of rape victims report to the police,
and the rate of reporting by domestic violence victims is even lower. While
myriad factors contribute to a victim's decision to report or to remain
silent, Human Rights Watch found that the inadequacy of the government's
response to victims of violence plays a significant role in perpetuating
the silence and underreporting. The government of Russia fails to afford
victims of violence the protection of the law required by the international
human rights treaties to which Russia is a party.
(D913) 12/97, 56 pp., $7.00/£3.95
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MOSCOW:
Open Season,
Closed City
Today Moscow is throwing its doors open to visitors to help celebrate
the 850th anniversary of its founding. The great lengths that the Moscow
city government, led by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, has invested in the city's
celebrations to attract visitors contrasts sharply with its strictly enforced
policy, left over from the Soviet era, to limit and control visitors' stays
in the capital, and to make residence in Moscow practically off-limits
to non-Muscovites. Even with several apparent recent improvements, Moscow's
implementation of Russia's civilian registration system, which requires
permanent residents and visitors to register with the police, remains unduly
onerous and discriminatory. Indeed, current registration rules in Moscow
amount to a licensing system and are not based on the idea of notification,
as the federal rules were intended. They infringe on freedom of movement
as much as their predecessor, the propiska—or the obligatory permit that
appeared (and continues to appear) as a stamp in every citizen's internal
passport indicating his or her place of residence.
(D910) 9/97, 40 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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A REVIEW OF THE
COMPLIANCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION WITH COUNCIL OF EUROPE COMMITMENTS
AND OTHER HUMAN RIGHTS OBLIGATIONS ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF ITS ACCESSION
TO THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE
On February 28, 1996, the Russian Federation became a full member of
the Council of Europe, an intergovernmental organization based in Strasbourg,
France, which, among other goals, aims to protect human rights. Accession
to the Council of Europe heightened expectations that the Russian Federation
would take concrete steps to improve its poor human rights record in the
year that has followed. However, on the first anniversary of its accession,
it is clear that the Russian Federation has made little progress in fulfilling
its new obligations and indeed, in some cases, has flagrantly violated
them. Through August 1996, it continued to perpetrate attacks on civilians
and other violations of international humanitarian law in Chechnya and
to execute prisoners condemned to death, in violation of its obligation
to institute a death penalty moratorium from the day of its accession.
It failed to ratify within a year of accession several significant human
rights conventions and protocols and generally failed to translate legislative
reform into practice in addressing long-standing abuses such as appalling
and even “torturous” prison conditions, police brutality, freedom of movement,
deprivation of the rights of refugees, and discrimination on the basis
of ethnicity and gender.
(D903) 2/97, 34 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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A LEGACY OF ABUSE
On Sunday, January 27, the people of Chechnya held presidential and
parliamentary elections, the first since the brutal war ended there last
fall. These elections may mark the beginning of a new era for Chechnya
after twenty months of war and destruction. However, many issues remain
unresolved and continue to present an obstacle to establishing long-term
respect for human rights and the rule of law. By some accounts, more than
1,400 Chechens and 1,000 Russian servicemen remain missing, yet the Russian
parliament has thus far failed to adopt an acceptable amnesty that would
release those still forcibly detained by both sides; bartering for individuals
continues in spite of an “all for all” prisoner exchange envisaged in the
Khasavyurt agreements. Mass graves contain unidentified bodies. Landmines
pose a constant threat to civilians. And the complete failure to hold accountable
those responsible for crimes against civilians deepens an already profound
Chechen mistrust of the Russian government, sets an ugly precedent for
the immunity of the military in both Russian and Chechen societies, and
serves to perpetuate the notion that humanitarian law guarantees are nothing
but a myth.
(D902) 1/97, 25 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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REPORT TO THE 1996 OSCE REVIEW CONFERENCE
The August 31, 1996 Khasavyurt agreements, which brought a fragile
peace to Russia’s breakaway republic of Chechnya, have put at least a temporary
end to the most hideous violations of human rights and humanitarian law
committed in Russia since the break-up of the Soviet Union. However, the
legacy of abuse in Chechnya lingers: more than 1,400 Chechens and 1,900
Russian troops remain missing; mass graves contain unidentified bodies;
bartering for individuals continues in spite of an “all for all” prisoner
exchange envisaged in the Khasavyurt agreements; landmines pose a constant
threat to civilians; and the complete failure—especially on the part of
Russian forces—to hold accountable those responsible for crimes against
civilians in the short run deepens an already profound Chechen mistrust
of the Russian government, and in the long run will jeopardize a lasting
peace. Steps can and must be taken now to guarantee that the new government
of Chechnya will respect the basic rights of individuals.
View
the summary and recommendations of this report.
(D816) 11/96, 14 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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The Ingush-Ossetian
Conflict in the Prigorodnyi Regions
On October 31, 1992, fighting erupted between Ingush militias and North
Ossetian security forces and paramilitaries supported by the Russian Interior
Ministry and Army troops in the Prigorodnyi region of North Ossetia, a
republic located in the North Caucasus of the Russian Federation. The conflict,
which lasted six days, was rooted in a dispute between ethnic Ingush and
Ossetians over the Prigorodnyi region, a sliver of land of 978 square kilometers
that both sides claim. In 1944, Stalin exiled the Ingush from the Prigorodnyi
region and awarded the area to North Ossetia. While this report investigates
human rights violations committed by all parties to the conflict since
it began, its major emphasis is on the events of November 1992, on the
process of return for the displaced, and on attempts to bring to justice
those who committed criminal acts connected with the conflict. The report
also examines the Russian government's weak response to events leading
to the armed conflict and its utter failure to prevent the destruction
of thousands of homes.
(1657) 4/96, 112 pp., ISBN 1-56432-165-7, $10.00/£8.95
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CAUGHT IN THE CROSS FIRE
Civilians in Gudermes and Pervomayskoye
The fighting in Chechnya escalated in December 1995 as the war entered
its second year. Civilians were the primary victims of the renewed fighting,
caught between two warring sides—Russian forces and pro-independence rebels
led by the late Dudayev. As has been the case throughout this war, the
Russian Army showed total disregard for the safety of the civilian population.
The shelling of the village of Pervomay-skoye in January 1996 was only
one dramatic example of the Russian Army's systematic violation of humanitarian
law. The pro-Dudayev forces, for their part, also violated international
humanitarian law, endangering the safety of noncombatants by using civilian
property for military purposes and by taking civilians hostage and using
them as human shields.
(D803) 3/96, 31 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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CRIME OR SIMPLY
PUNISHMENT?
Racists Attacks
by Moscow Law Enforcement
Russian society has been hit hard in recent years by destabilizing
changes. An unprecedented wave of crime, population shifts, and crises
related to economic transition raised the urgent need for a sense of control
and for someone to blame. Increasingly, the scapegoat in both public perception
and state policy is people of color. Our investigation revealed that law
enforcement authorities in Moscow not only failed to uphold Russia's obligations
to fight racial discrimination but, since 1992, conducted a campaign of
harassment and brutality against dark-skinned people. State-sponsored abuse
included restrictions of freedom of movement, arbitrary detention, arbitrary
house searches and invasion of privacy, extortion, and physical assault.
(D712) 9/95, 32 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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Partisan War in
Chechnya on Eve of WWII Commemoration
This report — the fourth in a series — documents Russian forces' flagrant
human rights violations against the civilian population in the ongoing
conflict with Chechen rebels. These violations include indiscriminate fire,
direct attacks on civilians, attacks on displaced persons in transit, looting,
abuses during disarmament, and the probable massacre of 100-200 civilians
between April 6-8, 1995, in the village of Samaskhi. It also points out
the terrible irony arising from the May 1995 commemoration of the 50th
anniversary of the end of World War II held against a backdrop of unchecked
abuse by Russian troops in Chechnya.
(D708) 5/95, 19 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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NEITHER JOBS
NOR JUSTICE
State Discrimination
Against Women in Russia
Economic and political changes in Russia have left many Russians staggering
under the burdens of rising unemployment, high rates of inflation, disappearing
social services and the encroaching threats of corruption and organized
crime. Women in particular are suffering the consequences of such change
as they face widespread employment discrimination that is practiced, condoned
and tolerated by the government. Government employers have fired women
workers in disproportionate numbers — over two-thirds of Russia's unemployed
are women — and refuse to employ women because of their sex. When women
challenge such discrimination, they either are ignored by their employers
and by state agencies responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws
or are told that priority should be given to men seeking jobs.
(D705) 3/95, 30 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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Three Months of
War in Chechnya
This report is the third in a series on the conflict in Chechnya. As
the war in the breakaway republic enters its third month, Russian forces
continue to commit gross abuses against the civilian population. In the
early weeks of the war, Russian bombs and artillery fire laid waste to
Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, and outlying villages, destroying apartment
buildings, hospitals, and other civilian objects — killing, maiming, or
injuring thousands of civilians.
(D706) 2/95, 26 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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WAR IN CHECHNYA
New Report from
the Field
This is the second in a series of reports documenting violations of
human rights and humanitarian law by all forces in the war in Chechnya.
Conducting fact-finding missions in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, and
in Ingushetiya, interviewing refugees who fled from Grozny and the surrounding
regions, our researchers describe in the victims' own words the indiscriminate
bombing and shelling of Chechnya that has inflicted devastating suffering
on civilians.
(D702) 1/95, 14 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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RUSSIA’S WAR IN
CHECHNYA
Victims Speak
Out
The first in a series of reports that document violations of humanitarian
law by all sides in the war in Chechnya, it describes how Russian forces
have shown utter contempt for civilian lives in the breakaway republic
of Chechnya. Eyewitness testimony described Russian bombs, shells or mortar
fire levelling apartment buildings, entire neighborhoods, and single-family
homes in Grozny and hitting civilian areas in outlying villages in Chechnya
and in neighboring Ingushetiya. Russian forces also destroyed at least
two hospitals and part of a third, an orphanage, and several markets. They
have inflicted hundreds of civilian deaths, gruesome casualties, and caused
an estimated 350,000 people to flee.
(D701) 1/95, 8 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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WAR OR PEACE?
Human Rights and Russian Military
Involvement in the “Near Abroad”
The Russian Federation is engaged in military policies in several armed
conflicts in the “near abroad” — the countries of the former Soviet Union
— that simultaneously protect and violate human rights. Russia inherited
command of the far-flung Soviet armed forces after the legal dissolution
of the Soviet Union in 1991; it has deployed additional troops as peace-keepers
and sent millions of dollars worth of humanitarian assistance to areas
of conflict that are now legally separate from Russia, including Georgia,
Moldova and Tajikistan. At the same time, some Russian forces have violated
their officially neutral position and joined the fighting, killing and
injuring civilians and looting their property, in violation of international
law.
(D522) 12/93, 15 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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(D414) Russian Residence & Travel Restrictions,
8/92, 12 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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