In a statement on Tuesday, Director Holly Cartner of Human Rights Watch in Europe and Central Asia said that the baseless detention of lawyers Dmitri Egoshin, Roman Veretennikov and Vadislav Sadykov of the Joint Mobile Group of Russian Non-Governmental Organizations should be properly investigated by the Russian authorities.

The three lawyers were detained without charge by regional Chechen security forces on February 7. After being illegally held for 15 hours, they were released on February 8 with no explanation of the basis for their detention. Security officials destroyed tape recordings confiscated from the rights advocates, who fear that their offices may also have been raided.

Cartner stressed the importance of bringing the offending officers to responsibility and of assuring safe working conditions for human rights advocates in Chechnya and the other volatile republics in Russia’s North Caucasus.

Referring to a January 23 statement by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Cartner said that “this arbitrary detention clearly demonstrates that the Chechen law enforcement agencies continue harassing human rights defenders despite Prime Minister Putin’s recent call for a healthy working environment for human rights groups.”

The rights organizations Amnesty International, Civil Rights Defenders and Front Line also issued statements condemning the incident.

The three detained lawyers meanwhile plan to file charges against the security officers in court.

The incident is a disturbing reminder of last year’s increase in violent persecution of human rights workers in the North Caucasus. Natalia Estemirova of the Memorial human rights organization was kidnapped and murdered in Chechnya in July, leading the organization to close its operations in the area. One month later, charity workers Zarema Sadulaeva and Umar Dzhabrailov were found dead in their car in the Chechen capital of Grozny. Domestic and international human rights groups have continually blamed the Russian authorities for allowing continued violence to endanger activists and reporters in the volatile area.

The World Report 2010 by Human Rights Watch (HRW), released on Wednesday, details the results of the organization’s research on the conditions of civil rights around the world. Researchers concluded that 2009 marked a downturn in human rights on a global scale, but that the situation for Russian rights advocates in particular had become “unprecedentedly tragic.”

In addition to issues regarding the armed conflict over South Ossetia, government harassment of NGOs, migrant worker rights violations, health care concerns, and the failure of international efforts to address Russia’s rights situation, the report spent significant time discussing the slew of murders of Russian activists over the course of last year.

“The brazen murders of at least five civil rights activists and violence and harassment toward several others marked a severe deterioration in the human rights climate in Russia,” says the report.

Experts noted that, most often, the journalists and civil activists who were under the highest risk of violence worked on issues relating to the North Caucasus.

“2009 saw an increase in violence and threats against human rights defenders, civil activists, and independent journalists in Russia, particularly those working on the North Caucasus,” says the report. According to HRW, these developments contrasted sharply with the “positive rhetoric” of President Dmitri Medvedev.

“We don’t deny that the president’s rhetoric is positive,” said HRW expert Tatyana Lokshina in an interview with Gazeta.ru. “It’s easy and nice to listen to his statements, but they remain only on the level of rhetoric, even though he’s been in power for a sufficient length of time.”

According to Lokshina, the actions of the Russian authorities have hastened the deterioration of Russian civil society. That the murders of rights advocates largely go uninvestigated “serves as a distinctive source of inspiration for criminals, who understand that no consequences will follow” their actions.

The report also remarked upon the continued discrimination of Russia’s 4 to 9 million migrant workers, citing unsafe working conditions, unpaid wages and a lack of redress for such abuses. Additionally, “police frequently use document inspections to extort money from visible minorities, including migrant workers,” the majority of whom are from Central Asia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

In its criticism of Russia over the consequences of the August 2008 military conflict with Georgia, HRW stated that 20,000 residents of “deliberately destroyed ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia” are still unable to return to their homes more than a year later. It also cited a September 2009 independent report funded by the European Union that found widespread violations of international law on the part of both Russia and Georgia.

The report concludes with a mention of the concern among residents of Sochi, the Black Sea city that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, regarding environmental and property rights violations on the part of the government, which is struggling to complete the necessary infrastructure for the games.

The HRW report totals more than 600 pages, approximately ten of which are dedicated to Russia.

The full text of the Russian section of the report can be read by clicking here.

The source of Aushev’s fears was backed by colleague Musa Pliev, aid to the Ingush president and representative of the family of another slain oppositionist. According to Pliev, the current murder investigation must change its focus to consider a political motive. The five possible motives outlined by authorities, which Pliev called “absurd and baseless,” include criminal associations, promises of aid to demonstrators who faced possible prosecution, and an extramarital affair. Pliev asserts out that Aushev was never associated with any criminals, and that the demonstrators Aushev supposedly promised to help have long since been freed. The woman he is accused of having an affair with is a cousin, and was a passenger with Aushev when their car was sprayed with machine gun fire on Sunday.

Ingush President Yunus-bek Yevkurov blames the murder on the republic’s security forces. In an October 26 interview on the Echo Moskvy radio station, Yevkurov said that he took the news of the murder “with severity,” that the crime aimed to destabilize the republic, and that it had been directed against him personally. The president has pledged to put all possible resources behind the investigation.

According to Yevkurov, the leaders of the republic had nothing to do with the murder.

While Aushev supported Yevkurov’s efforts, he had lost faith in the president months before he was killed.

According to Aushev’s writings, President Yevkurov “has fallen under the influence of the security forces, which have continued these six months [since he assumed power] to abduct, torture, and kill people…not a single time did he speak of how the tyranny of the security forces was inadmissible, but with their own actions they made clear who was in charge.”

Tatyana Lokshina, Deputy Director of the Human Rights Watch Moscow bureau, agrees that the murder calls into question Yevkurov’s ability to protect the pluralism in the republic that he supports. She stated that citizen activism had become “practically a form of suicide” in the Northern Caucuses, and called on the Kremlin to act.

The Kremlin installed Yevkurov as president of Ingushetia after removing grossly unpopular Murat Zyazikov a year ago this week. Zyazikov and his family face personal and financial ruin if the Prosecutor General decides to bring criminal charges of embezzlement.

Aushev’s murder marks at least the fifth activist killing in the Northern Caucuses this year alone, in a region plagued by government corruption and violence. Security forces in charge of controlling the insurgent violence spilling over from neighboring Chechnya are widely accused of abductions and extrajudicial killings that remain largely uninvestigated. As of July of this year, 170 persons have been kidnapped in Ingushetia, and while abductions have recently lessened, murders have increased. Magomed Yevloyev, former head of Ingushetia.ru (since changed to Ingushetia.org) and close ally of Aushev, was shot and killed by security forces while detained on August 31, 2008.

Maksharip Aushev’s car was shot with approximately sixty bullets as he and cousin Tauzela Dzeitova drove through the Kabardino-Balkaria territory in the Northern Caucasus on October 25. He died in his car of bullet wounds, while Dzeitova was hospitalized and has undergone several operations. He had been the victim of a failed kidnapping attempt on September 15 shortly after leaving a meeting with government authorities.

Aushev was a prominent businessman in the Russian republic of Ingushetia who turned to activism after his son and nephew were abducted in 2007, which he blames on the republic’s security forces. He had been determined to form an opposition that would use all lawful methods to stop bloodshed in the troubled North Caucus region. More than two thousand people attended his funeral on October 26.

Representatives of Memorial and the New-York based Human Rights Watch (HRW) visited the conflict zone to investigate what actually happened there. According to the rights workers, they found that the official casualty numbers put forward by Tskhinvali to be grossly exaggerated. While officials have maintained that around 1600 people were killed, no documentation confirming this figure was ever presented.

“People are individuals, and only the most detailed and full list can present an accurate picture of the death toll,” said Alexander Cherkasov, a Memorial board member. He added that most of those killed on the South Ossetian side were armed resistors, and not peaceful residents. Still, Cherkasov underscored that even a small number of casualties was a grave loss for South Ossetia, whose population numbers approximately 70,000.

The rights workers made clear that looting was still rampant in the buffer zone around South Ossetia, and said local residents were responsible. Russian soldiers stationed in the area, meanwhile, have taken to drinking, and are looking the other way. “Having entered a wine-producing region, they have started to let themselves go, and may become dangerous,” the authors write.

The report counters rumors that Georgian soldiers had tortured Ossetian prisoners. “As result of our trip,” said HRW investigator Tatyana Lokshina, “we did not find any evidence of prisoners being tortured by Georgian special forces. There are many rumors going around about this, but no specifics.”

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For more on the human rights situation in South Ossetia see:

Human Rights Expert Tatyana Lokshina explains the conflict in South Ossetia – (Part One and Two)

According to the latest HRW report, the number of casualties in South Ossetia was grossly exaggerated by Russian officials. Russian authorities also scaled down their estimates on August 22nd by more than 10 times. Video prepared by Dmitri Borko.

South Ossetia: Crimes and Myths. Part 2
August 20, 2008
Source: Grani.ru / Grani-tv.ru
translation/subtitles by: theotherrussia.org

Watch Part 1 of the interview

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Transcript:
(interviewer) in connection with the looting, which is now eagerly being discussed on both sides.

(TL) So, looting happens… Well, looting can be different, actually, and in the context of this story, one can speak about two types of looting. One is completely normal looting, right, the standard war-time looting, when militiamen, in this case, right, or simply people, men, go into abandoned houses, and steal everything that they see and everything that they like out of there. There is a different kind of looting, completely targeted, which we also documented there, this is looting directly in the Georgian villages, which have for a number of years existed practically as enclaves on the territory of South Ossetia. And this looting, by our observations, was, well if not organized, then highly systematic and targeted.

We drove on this road to the city.. got stuck in an enormous traffic jam. And when, before we were stuck in this traffic jam, we drove through several Georgian villages. We saw several burning buildings, some of which were already just embers. We saw looters, undoubtedly militiamen, running into houses, carrying furniture out of there, carrying rugs, carrying some kind of household appliances, like vacuum cleaners, televisions.

They load this into their cars, very happy with themselves, shouting, laughing, very joyful to all that is happening.

And in that hour that we were stuck in the traffic jam, dozens of burning houses appeared in these villages. Just in the hour that we spent on the road.

Yes, here I should immediately explain that the people, the residents, left the villages, for the most part. But as usually happens in war, the oldest and the most helpless are exactly the ones who remained. There were few of them. In the four villages we visited, you could gather, well, 20 to 30 people, no way there were more. No way there were more. But none the less, these are absolutely desolate old people, who remained without food, without water, in burning villages.

We spoke with three such people. For two of them, militiamen had burned down their houses. One old woman, they literally burned her house, that is, set her house on fire an hour before we began speaking with her. She just stood there, wringing her hands against the background of her house, which blazed like a torch, literally. An old man, who was 74 years old, if I’m not mistaken, who we also spoke with, for him, on the eve of our drive on this, in truth, terrifying road, a group of militiamen went into his house, and started to take some things out. He tried, well, not to resist them, how could he resist them, right, a single old man against several armed people. But to say something to them, “Don’t touch this. Don’t touch this.” On that spot, they set fire to his house.

They asked very much that the MES [Emergency Situations Ministry] somehow get involved in the situation. They asked very much that the international humanitarian organizations do something. And you know, as result, yes, everything somehow moved from a standstill. Because sometime, after a day, and of course we raised а tremendous uproar, the Russian soldiers put checkpoints on this road. Stopped letting the militiamen go, naturally, to these villages.

(interviewer) Were you able to do anything else there, on the ground?

As far as I understand it, from what the surrounding people told me later, there actually were some problems which we understood first, and spoke so loudly about, that something got off the ground. So, we really exerted all possible and impossible efforts so that the bodies of Georgian servicemen, which were laying in the street in 30 degree heat, be removed from the city. And all told, there were two different considerations that made it completely urgent to solve this problem. A purely sanitary sense, because ultimately, the risk of an epidemic was rising. Well, and a humanitarian sense.

When we first started interviewing the people there, these were people in a deep state of shock. They still didn’t completely understand what had happened, and how this could have happened to them. And here they come out of their home, and the first thing they see at their doorstep is a decomposing corpse. Well, what a big joy is it for them. On the other hand, these dead Georgian soldiers, they have relatives. And it should be said that after all our long shouts, some kind of movement happened on this spot, and the MES people took the bodies, put them in zinc, and somehow, temporarily buried them. We hope that afterwards, later, they’ll start turning these bodies over to Georgia.

We did not have time to attend to one issue, which concerns us very much, and we hope to pursue it, and that’s the problem of prisoners of war, ordinary prisoners, and I believe there may be such a thing as a problem of hostages.

(interviewer) What is the state of those injured in South Ossetia, in your evaluation.

One can speak of tens of victims, among the civilian, among the peaceful residents. But by no means thousands. And why we seized on these figures so much, and now we are severely being accused there that we are trying to, by playing into the hands of Saakashvili, and therefore in reality America, because we are in an engaged position. Since, how else could it be, we have an office in New York. That we are trying to lower the casualties.

We are trying to do exactly one thing. We are endeavoring that a sound count of these same casualties be carried out. And that instead of throwing accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing into each other’s faces, that both Russia and Georgia finally came to their senses, counted their dead, counted their wounded, analyzed what is happening, and tried to find some kind of way out from this very bad situation. And if the highest officials continue to say that thousands of people have died, then this only complicates the way out of the crisis. Because the populace of that same Ossetia, will simply never be able to forgive the deaths of thousands of peaceful residents.

South Ossetia: Crimes and Myths. Part 1
August 20, 2008
Source: Grani.ru / Grani-tv.ru
Video prepared by Dmitri Borko.
translation/subtitles by: theotherrussia.org

Watch Part 2 of the interview.

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transcript:

(Tatyana Lokshina speaking)

You know, this was a situation where, just now, there was very heavy shelling, just now there was a very short but nonetheless war, and both official and unofficial people wanted very much to tell what had happened to them.

Personally, I have worked very much in Chechnya in the past several years, and today, the problem there is that the level of fear among the populace is completely out of control, and everyone has long gone silent because of this fear, and it is extremely difficult to obtain information.

In Ossetia, everything was completely the other way around, any person was ready to tell their story, the story of their family, the story of their neighbors, anything you wanted.

The only thing was, and this relates to the issue of information, and the collection of information, or how to do it correctly or incorrectly.

So you come to any house, a house that has been destroyed by shelling, and there were quite a few of those there.

Not the 70% that the MES (Emergency Situations Ministry) claimed, no way near 70, but many.

The city, in the Center and South suffered serious enough destruction, and so you walk into one of these little courtyards, with its box-like houses, houses with holes from Grad [missiles], with torn-apart apartments, houses that are actually seriously damaged, their residents are sitting there, and you walk up to these residents and tell them:

“Were you here during the shelling?”

“Yes”

“Tell me what happened here, these days when the war was going on.”

And immediately, and of course these people have been sitting in basements for several days, they are exhausted, they are under immense stress, and they start to relate what happened very emotionally.

The first thing they tell you, of course, is that the Georgians are just fascists.

This isn’t a nation, but a disgrace, and there should be no more Georgians on the earth, because they’re such fascists, and that this was worse than what the Germans did during the Great Patriotic War [WWII].

So you ask:

“What did they do?”

Well, they start telling you how they ran over infants with the caterpillar belts of their tanks, how they raped women, how they put young men against a wall and shot them in front of their mothers.

Then, when you ask more directed questions, you learn that the person you’re speaking with didn’t see this himself, but someone else told it to him.

And who was it that told him?

Well, let’s say it was Vasya from the neighboring street.

Then you go to the neighboring street, and look for Vasya for a long time.

You find Vasya and tell him:

“Well, you know Fedya said you had witnessed this nightmare, and it’s just.. my oh my..” or however it’s customary to do it.

They click their tongues there as they do in Chechnya.

“And tell me, Vasya, what was the nightmare.”

Vasya starts to tell you approximately the same thing, and then it turns out he also didn’t actually see it, and who saw it was some, I don’t know, Stepa.

Stepa also didn’t see it, and so on indefinitely.

In truth, we found a great deal of evidence, completely solid proof that indiscriminate weapons were used there, that Grad [missile systems] were used there, which were used to shell residential blocks.

That much of the destruction of the city was precisely the result of Grad missiles.

There are rockets laying around, and fragments of rockets laying around, we photographed them, we understand approximately how and where they hit, and from which side they flew.

And without a doubt, they flew from the Georgian side.

Well, I’m saying this now in advance, because at the moment there are various speculations.

For instance, all of a sudden, that maybe it was Russia that bombed everything to spite Georgia.

Mr. Saakashvili told CNN that Russia leveled Tskhinvali from the face of the earth, and to discover this, they should look at reports by Human Rights Watch, although Human Rights Watch never said anything of the sort.

Which is just wonderful.

Yes, shelling was done with Grad missiles, yes it came from the Georgian side.

Yes, tanks rolled into the city.

The army acted in, pardon the cliche, the Chechen scenario.

And specifically, first in the population centers, and I’m not just speaking about Tskhinvali, but let’s say the villages that we were in.

First a bombardment took place, then, after a massive shelling, the armored vehicles moved in.

And after the armor, the infantry forces walked in.

On the level of the shelling, and the armor, genuinely, the rights of the civilian population were violated.

Weapons were used which in no case can be used.

There were direct tank attacks on residential buildings, and on the building’s basements.

And in the basements sat those same children, women and old men who didn’t leave the city.

There were many bad things.

But from the point of view of the atrocities that, supposedly, were committed by individual Georgian soldiers, the infantry, we did not find any information from first-person sources.

There are very many rumors, very many appalling stories, but I do not have proof of it as of yet, though I expect to return to the region, and maybe I will find it.

Naturally, if I find it, I will in no case conceal it.

And in the villages, say in the village of Khitogorovo, which is 6 kilometers, if I’m not mistaken, from Tskhinvali.

When the infantry troops came in, the infantry, judging by everything, the foot soldiers were certain that there were very many [Ossetian] militiamen in the village.

I don’t know where they got this information.

They were shooting, from machine guns, at all the entry-ways, simply in a row, as they moved through, and several people died there, whose relatives we spoke with.

All of this happened.

I surmise that the Georgian side, in response to such allegations from Human Rights Watch, will say:

“What peaceful residents?”

“What residential blocks?”

“In every block, there were militiamen.”

You know, I don’t deny that there were undoubtedly militiamen in every block.

And the militiamen defended the houses.

They also don’t hide this.

And say completely calmly:

“We have wives here, we have children here, our relatives are here.”

“These are our houses, what else are we supposed to do?”

Their family members tell of the same thing.

“Of course, our boys, this is their responsibility.”

But even the presence of militiamen, right, in residential quarters, from the point of view of international law, does not justify neither the use of Grad installations, nor direct tank hits on apartment buildings.

In the same village of Khitogorovo, I was told that when the infantry marched in, they shot up all the entry-ways, several people died.

And several of these Georgian foot soldiers, they walked into one courtyard, of course they were going into all the yards, looking for armed men, looking for weapons.

And in the courtyard were sitting, well, an old man and an old woman. Just an old man and an old woman. Completely stunned by the shelling, completely lost.

And the foot soldiers are really young guys, to tell the truth, not more than 20 years old, and they stood up straight, having walked into the courtyard, and, horror-stricken, stared at these old-timers.

And said, “What are you doing here?”

And those replied, “What do you mean, we live here.”

“We thought there were only military people here.”

In principle, there are a good number of such stories, so there is a basis to believe that many Georgian soldiers, in striking houses and courtyards, saw their situation as a standoff against militiamen, never stopping to think that there could be peaceful people there.

It is possible that they were fed fables that the peaceful people had long since left.

Sodeystvie (Assistance), which was formed in the 1990s by a refugee family from Tajikistan, helped refugee families and forced migrants integrate into society. The non-profit also set up festivals for children’s dance ensembles around Russia. It was ordered to dissolve on February 4th, 2008, by a court in the Vladimir oblast, after charges of failing to report on its activities, and failing to disclose that its location had changed. The group was compliant with tax authorities, but did not register with the necessary federal agency.

Rights activists believe this to be a precedent case, which may impact future prosecutions as authorities step up the enforcement of a 2006 law on registering non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The law, which came to effect in October 2006, required each of Russia’s estimated 500,000 NGOs to first register with the Federal Registration Agency, then file yearly paperwork with detailed reporting on all aspects of their funding and activities. Groups with any foreign funding were required to file the most details, up to and including the cost of office supplies. Small organizations in particular were concerned over the burden that the law would put on their staff and resources. Groups that fail to file in time, or file incorrectly may be taken to court and closed by authorities.

A year and a half after the law went into effect, there are some 227,000 registered NGOs. According to the state-run Rossiyskaya Gazeta, only a quarter of those groups had filed correctly by this year’s April 15th deadline. A report by Human Rights Watch found that the law was having a stifling effect on Russia’s civil society, and noted that thousands of groups have been threatened and dissolved since the law went into effect. Authorities have recently pledged to step up enforcement.

Officials have argued that the new law provides necessary regulation for NGOs, and is no different from regulations in the West. Still, critics have maintained that the law is entirely too strict, and point to certain organizations that have been targeted repeatedly without explanation.

Valery Madyarov, who heads Sodeystvie, said that the decision of the court was unlawful. He plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Incidentally, Madyarov’s wife Nina also runs a non-profit organization, called the “Children’s Ballet Theater.” Prosecutors recently started an investigation into that group as well, it now faces court-ordered closure.