Kadyrov's regime gets Kremlin support amid OSCE criticism

Russia cannot agree with the conclusions of the OSCE report on human rights violations in Chechnya and finds it deliberately politicized, stated Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov and Permanent Representative of Russia to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that after the announcement of the launch of the Moscow Mechanism with respect to Russia, an Austrian OSCE expert studied the information about gross human rights violations in Chechnya and prepared a report about them. The report published on December 20 described as indisputable facts about enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial executions, pressure on rights defenders, and persecution of gays in Chechnya.

The Kremlin is informed about the content of the OSCE report on the issue of human rights violations in Chechnya and "cannot agree" with its conclusions as a whole, although "the entire report is yet to be analyzed," Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has stated today.

At a closed meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council held on December 20, Alexander Lukashevich, Permanent Representative of Russia to the OSCE, voiced the Russia's position on the report. He sharply criticized the report, declared "the initial deliberate politicization of the topic," and called "dubious" the sources of information underlying the study. Besides, Alexander Lukashevich separately commented on the statements concerning the case against Oyub Titiev, the head of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" in Grozny, and declared that they "might be classified as an attempt to exert pressure on the Russian judicial authorities and undermining the principle of the independence of the judiciary."

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on December 21, 2018 at 05:44 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.