|
|
|
|
TITLE: European Rights Envoy Probes Moscow on Mass Grave |
AUTHOR: |
PUB: Reuters |
DATE: February 27, 2001 |
|
MOSCOW-- (Reuters) The Council of Europe's human rights supremo pressed Russian officials on Monday for answers to fresh reports of atrocities and mass graves in Chechnya, before a visit to the shattered separatist region this week. Alvaro Gil-Robles, human rights commissioner for the Strasbourg-based democracy watchdog, will visit Chechnya on Tuesday and Wednesday after talks with top Kremlin officials and civil and military prosecutors. Gil-Robles said on Ekho Moskvy radio that prosecutors had told him 16 bodies had been unearthed in a suburb of regional capital Grozny and that a full investigation was under way. "I asked them to present a full analysis, and they said 'Yes,' and if someone is responsible, they should be brought to justice," Gil- Robles said. "I'm waiting for information and I think we will get it." Military officials have suggested the victims may have died in inter-clan fighting or rebel kidnappings, but Segodnya newspaper quoted residents saying one corpse had already been identified as a 16-year-old youth who disappeared last December, when Russians controlled the area. "I raised a lot of questions, the government is thinking about them and promised to give me answers this week," Gil-Robles said, adding that he also wanted to see pits at a paratroopers' base which a prominent Moscow journalist has charged were used to hold Chechens. The military has denied Anna Politkovskaya's claims, saying the pits were used as dumps. Russia's 17-month campaign to end Chechnya's independence bid has triggered strong criticism in the West, where officials have accused Moscow's troops of human rights violations. Russia has admitted to isolated rights infringements in the course of military operations, but denies they were regular or excessive. Human rights campaigners say federal troops continue to illegally detain local residents and demand ransoms for kidnapped Chechens. Aid, Economic Plans For Crippled Region Chechnya Minister Vladimir Yelagin said in televised comments after talks with Gil-Robles, that the government would set up in the next few days a special commission to coordinate the flow of humanitarian aid to Chechnya. It would include representatives of international humanitarian organizations. "The creation of such a transparent and effective system of humanitarian aid will strongly activate this work in the Chechen republic," Yelagin said. Russia now says it controls the whole of Chechnya and earlier this year President Vladimir Putin ordered deep cuts in the region's 80,000-strong military force and kick-started an economic reconstruction campaign. Gil-Robles said a whole gamut of problems had to be sorted out before Chechens -- some 150,000 of whom live in refugee camps in neighboring Ingushetia -- felt confident to go home. "We must talk political, economic, legal reconstruction and especially the return of refugees to Chechnya," he said. "How to help them rebuild homes, jobs, schools, hospitals, and return a constitutional system to Chechnya." Russia's Human Rights Commissioner Oleg Mironov, who is to hold meetings with Gil-Robles, said on Ekho Moskvy that Chechens needed to see concrete changes to restore their faith in Moscow. "It is a horrible war...and the people are tired, tormented and have lost their faith in the future," Mironov said. "We need a really strong social-economic program...order, stability and to focus our means on making people feel the federal powers are in Chechnya to establish ordinary, peaceful life." END |