Abductions of people in Chechnya can be stopped

A press conference of Oleg Orlov, Council Chairman of the Human Rights Center "Memorial", was held at the Independent Press Center on December 3. Its subject was "Chechnya After the Election: Abductions, Illegal Prisons, and Torture". Today Memorial has three variants of statistics on the number of civilians abducted in Chechnya for the last 11 months. The first figure - 400 people - is given by Movsar Khamidov, official of the Chechen Government responsible for relations with security agencies. The second one - 380 people by October 20 - is given by the Chechen Interior Ministry. The third figure, which is a result of calculations by the Human Rights Center "Memorial", is more than 430 people. And the data for October and November of the current year can be underestimated since it is difficult enough to collect information in the mountainous districts of the republic. This figure will be more accurate at the beginning of the next year.

Then Mr. Orlov told that the number of abductions sharply decreased during the referendum and presidential elections (in March and September) when nearly all security structures on the territory of Chechnya were on higher state of alert. "One can assume that abductions of people are controllable and it is possible to avoid them. I can't say we have reliable information that all the abductions are the federals' doing; opinions that Akhmad Kadyrov's personal guards and rebels themselves succeed in this part of human rights violations in the republic also exist. Unfortunately, only 137 out of 431 abducted people have returned home so far; 47 people have been found killed. The whereabouts and destiny of the other 247 people remain unknown.

After speaking about the abductions, the human rights activist told journalists about illegal prisons in Chechnya, where all detainees - even if they are not beaten - are held for a very long time. As a case in point, journalists were showed a copy of the inquiry by Lawyer Yusupova to the Prosecutor of the Chechen Republic in which she asked him to look into the violations of one of her client's rights. Her client has been held in custody in one of the isolation wards in Grozny for a long time without any guilt.

At the end of the press conference, Oleg Orlov stressed that the intensity of terror only in Chechnya is comparable with the repressions of 1937 in the Soviet Union. It will become possible to change the situation only if the federal authority takes up this problem seriously.