2009 ORDINARY SESSION

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(Fourth part)

REPORT

Thirty-second Sitting

Wednesday 30 September 2009 at 3 p.m.

Mr HERKEL (Estonia). – We had the last report on the human rights situation in Chechnya more than four years ago. It was presented by our former colleague, Mr Bindig. In recent years, the situation has deteriorated in neighbouring areas – Ingushetia, Dagestan and so on. Therefore, my first question is, why did we forget this topic for such a long time?

The emblematic reason for today’s discussion is the murder of Natalya Estemirova. She has been described as a personal enemy of the de facto president of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. She was murdered just as she was finishing and starting to publish her huge work on the human rights situation and the history of recent years.

Estemirova had also co-operated closely with Anna Politkovskaya and Stanislav Markelov, who were earlier killed in Moscow. Unfortunately, several other journalists and human rights defenders have been killed in recent years in North Caucasus.

Let us move on from the situation of human rights defenders, which is very difficult, to the general human rights record. The European Court of Human Rights, which has big problems because Protocol No. 14 has not been ratified by the Russian Federation, still succeeded in making more than 100 judgments about disappearances, killings and torture that took place in Chechnya from 1999 to 2004, which means during the second war in Chechnya.

Recently, Human Rights Watch made a detailed analysis of about 33 such cases to make clear the conclusions reached in Russia following the Court’s judgments. In numerous cases, evidence obtained by Russian investigators and cited in the Court’s judgments indicates clearly the individuals directly involved in the violations, but not a single person has been held responsible for the crimes.

Tervikdokument: http://assembly.coe.int/