Diederick Lohman
May 26, 2000

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented various types of human rights violations by Russian forces over the past eight months of the conflict, which principally include the failure to provide safe exit routes for civilians to flee the war, summary executions, arbitrary arrests, torture, rape, and looting.

Chechens have committed abuses as well, and the most serious ones occurred in the period between the two wars and during the attack on Dagestan. However, the abuses committed by Chechens during this war have generally been much less serious than Russian abuses.

The first type of violations by Russian forces concerns the obligation to minimize civilian casualties by letting people leave war zones and by organizing safe exit routes (often referred to as humanitarian corridors). HRW’s research into this issue has shown that the Russian military in fact severely complicated the opportunity for Chechen civilians to leave and never provided truly safe exit routes. A frequent problem was that checkpoints along roads were turned into places where Russian soldiers would abuse Chechen civilians by beatings and arbitrary detentions for a few hours or days. They would also force Chechens to pay bribes to be able to be cleared through checkpoints. Consequently, only wealthy people could leave. The sum effect was that Chechens, especially males, were afraid to even try to leave war zones.

Russian authorities often claimed that they were opening safe exit routes from Grozny and other towns. If you witnessed the reality behind these claims, however, you would be forced to acknowledge that they were for foreign consumption only. No real safe exit routes were ever in place. HRW has even documented an incident when an official safe exit route was attacked: On October 29, 1999, 2-3 Russian airplanes carried out several rocket attacks on a large convoy of refugees. The casualties are estimated at 50-100 and include several Red Cross workers, two journalists and many women and children. The attack rendered further claims of so called safe exit routes unbelievable, as people were informed of what might happen.

Russian forces have also carried out summary executions. HRW has documented four incidents in detail where Russian soldiers executed numerous Chechen civilians. HRW has so far confirmed 130 deaths from such actions and documented dozens of allegations of additional executions in various different parts of Chechnya. The largest massacre occurred in the Grozny district Novye Aldi on February 5, where 60-80 people were shot dead. Video footage taken by people from Novye Aldi several days after the massacre shows the victims of the massacre.

These are some of the most serious war crimes that international humanitarian law knows. Many are crimes similar to those committed by the Serbian forces in Kosovo a year ago when NATO was willing to go as far as waging a highly controversial military campaign against Yugoslavia in the name of human rights. The international community’s response to the situation in Chechnya has so far been absolutely inadequate. Europe has criticized Russia with words - and that is basically all it has done. Russia has ignored most of the criticism. On occasion it has made more or less symbolic steps to allay Western concerns, such as with the appointment of Mr. Kalamanov and the creation of Mr. Krasheninnikov’s commission. And the international community has interpreted these steps as Russia’s willingness to compromise. Indeed, this a very optimistic way of understanding Russia’s response. Russia has obstructed any kind of serious international reaction to this conflict.

The international community has not been willing to use the more powerful mechanisms it has at its disposal, such economic, financial and political levers and even legal resources. This poses a very important question: how bad must the violations be committed by a country as powerful as Russia, a country which has a nuclear arms arsenal, before the international community intervenes? Or does this war show us that a permanent member of a Security Council can murder its own citizens, destruct their houses, torture them, arbitrarily arrest them without the international community taking real steps to address the abuses? If Russia gets away with this, then what reason will it have to meet its other international obligations?

What actually can and should the international community do? There are various alternatives. For example, a resolution of the UN Human Rights Commission exists which calls for the following: to stop the violations, to set up an independent commission of inquiry according to international standards, to enable access to Chechnya by the OSCE and experts of the Council of Europe, and to allow visits of special rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Commission.

So far, Russia has not fulfilled even one of these conditions. It is time for the international community to set a clear deadline when all these conditions are to be met. The international community should make clear that if the conditions are not met by the appointed deadline, decisive action against Russia will be taken.

In such an event, the European countries that are members of the Council of Europe would file a so called inter-state complaint against the Russian Federation with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. An inter-state complaint means that a member state of the Council of Europe (or a group of such states) files a complaint about certain violations of human rights or alleged violations with the European Court of Human Rights. A panel of judges of the court would then hear witnesses, would examine evidence and then determine whether or not Russia violated its international obligations.

This approach is particularly appropriate, for what can be more legitimate than ¨the verdict of a court made up of some of the most respected judges of Europe? It is more effective than excluding Russia from the Council of Europe, which would immediately strip the international community of the whole range of levers it does have over Russia. It also keeps open the possibility of dialogue while at the same time sends a very clear message to Russia that the kinds of abuses present in Chechnya will no longer be tolerated by the European community.

All the countries we have spoken to so far have told HRW that they want to use this measure as a last resort. But Russia has ignored Western criticism for eight months. Is it not time to implement such a measure now? The countries also claimed that they did not want to do it alone. However, the European governments don’t seem to have even tried to contact other governments and do it as a group. They seem to putting the whole issue aside. Some also said that individuals can file a complaint with the Court so why should states do so instead? But how can the Western countries expect the people in the war-torn country to first exhaust all domestic procedures and then file a case at Strasbourg? It is not realistic and the European countries more or less have the obligation to file the inter-state complaint against Russia with the Court so as to uphold the rights and freedoms that are included in the European Convention on Human Rights.

It is important that a country takes the lead in coordinating a European effort towards submitting such an inter-state complaint. This is an idea worth discussing here. Perhaps the Czech Republic will be willing to take the initiative in discussing the idea with its European partners to ascertain what kind of strategy can be adopted towards Russia.

(a summary of a spoken report and responses at the subsequent forum)

Diederick Lohman is the director of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch.

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