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TITLE: European Rights Envoy in Moscow Before Chechen Trip |
AUTHOR: |
PUB: Reuters |
DATE: February 26, 2001 |
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The Council of Europe's human rights supremo started a visit to Russia on Monday to study the situation in war-torn Chechnya, amid fresh media reports of atrocities committed in the rebel region by the military. Alvaro Gil-Robles, human rights commissioner for the Strasbourg-based democracy watchdog, will visit Chechnya on Tuesday and Wednesday after talks in Moscow. Gil-Robles met Chechnya Minister Vladimir Yelagin and Sergei Yastrzhembsky, chief Kremlin spokesman on the region, focusing mainly on ways to boost humanitarian aid to the war-devastated province. Yelagin said in televised comments that the government would set up in the next few days a special commission to coordinate the flow of humanitarian aid to Chechnya, which would include representatives of international humanitarian organizations. "The Commissioner confirmed that their side will offer people who will be able to control the flow of humanitarian aid," Yelagin said. "The creation of such a transparent and effective system of humanitarian aid will strongly activate this work in the Chechen republic." Later on Monday Gil-Robles was due to meet Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov. CHECHNYA RIGHTS VIOLATIONS A HOT ISSUE Russia's 17-month campaign to end Chechnya's independence bid has triggered strong criticism in the West, where officials have accused Moscow of excessive use of force against civilians and mass violations of human rights by its troops. Russia has admitted to isolated cases of human rights violations in the course of its military operations, but denies they were regular or excessive. Russia now says it controls the whole of Chechnya. Earlier this year President Vladimir Putin ordered deep cuts in the 80,000-strong military force in the region. But Russian human rights campaigners say federal troops continue to illegally detain local residents and demand ransoms for kidnapped Chechens. Late last week, prominent Moscow journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was briefly detained by the military in southeastern Chechnya, said she saw pits used to hold kidnapped Chechens at a paratroopers' base. The military denied Politkovskaya's claims, saying the pits were used as dumps. Itar-Tass news agency said on Monday a team of military prosecutors had flown to the base to investigate. Over the weekend, residents of a southeastern suburb of the devastated regional capital Grozny discovered a grave containing 11 civilian corpses. Some of the bodies were booby-trapped. Military officials have said it is too early to identify the bodies, adding that they were buried over a considerable period of time. Some suggested they may have been victims of inter-clan wars or rebel kidnappings. But Segodnya newspaper quoted residents as saying one of the corpses was identified as a 16-year-old youth who went missing in December 2000, when the area was under Russian control. END |