(Strasbourg, France, 3 April 2000)—Human Rights Watch representatives are in Strasbourg, France, this week to press the Council of Europe to take a strong stand against war crimes and human rights abuses in Chechnya.

The Human Rights Watch staff will provide briefings on their findings on Chechnya for members of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, a body of 582 parliamentarians from the Council's 41 member countries meeting in Strasbourg this week. Human Rights Watch has had a research presence in Ingushetia since early November 1999 and has taken testimony from more than 500 displaced people from Chechnya. The group has documented a total of more than 120 summary executions of civilians, as well as numerous cases of arbitrary detention, torture, rape, and ill-treatment of detainees by Russian forces in Chechnya.

The rights group will be pressing the Parliamentary Assembly to adopt a resolution calling on Council of Europe member states to take the Russian Federation to the Council's European Court of Human Rights over human rights violations committed in Chechnya. The Russian Federation became subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights when it signed the European Convention on Human Rights, after it joined the Council of Europe in 1996.