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December 2, 2005 Human Rights and the War in Chechnya: A Test for Europe The European human rights system is facing a critical test of strength as the Council of Europe prepares to challenge Russia over a series of alleged abuses in Chechnya. Earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Russia in three cases from the conflict in Chechnya, and dozens more are currently under consideration. The Council of Europe, which supervises the Court, now faces the problem of ensuring that Russia observes its decisions – not only by paying fines but also by holding genuine investigations into abuses carried out by Russian forces. The war in Chechnya has seen reports of war crimes and other violations of human rights by Russian forces on a far greater scale than in any other member of the European Court of Human Rights since the court was set up in 1959. Because Russia is not a member of the International Criminal Court, there is no international tribunal that can hear cases against individuals who may be responsible for violations of the laws of war. But the European Court of Human Rights can investigate whether the Russian state is ensuring that the rights of its citizens are respected in the course of this conflict on Russian territory. A Record of Crimes in Chechnya Groups such as Human Rights Watch and the Moscow-based organization Memorial have accused Russia of torture, illegal detention and the killing of civilians during the second Chechen war, which began in 1999. Allegations of abuse increased dramatically after the Russian army surrounded the Chechen capital Grozny in early 2000 and began pounding it with artillery and air power. Nurdi Nukhazhiyev, a human rights official with Chechnya’s Moscow-backed administration, admitted last summer that his officials had identified more than 50 mass graves in the republic, and that tens of thousands of civilians had been forcibly “disappeared”. Although reports of human rights violations have been widespread, it has taken years for the first cases to make their way through the European human rights system. Under court rules, a complaint must have been ignored by at least two levels of the host country’s legal system before the European Court is qualified to look at it. Russia ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1998, bringing itself within the Court's jurisdiction. Last February’s judgments focused on abuses early in the Chechen war. They represent one of the most significant attempts so far to address crimes committed during internal armed conflict within a framework of human rights law. The most prominent case concerned the indiscriminate bombing by Russian jets of a civilian convoy leaving Grozny in which the children of Medka Isayeva, 51, and her daughter in law were killed. Judges ruled that the bombing interfered with the right to life of the dead and ordered Russia to pay 57,000 euros in damages and 10,926 euros costs. The other cases concerned the use of excessive force against a Chechen village and the torture and killing of Chechen civilians; in these cases too judges found that Russia had failed to protect its citizens' right to life. In all cases, the Court ruled that the Russian state had also failed adequately to investigate the deaths, as required by the right to life provisions of the European Convention.
While Moscow can afford the fines imposed, the Court’s decision also requires the Russian government to grant redress to the people who brought the cases. The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has said that this requires Moscow to demonstrate that it is remedying the shortcomings in effective investigations into these abuses by the security forces. The call for genuine investigations is likely to be contentious. Rights groups say that Russia has refused to look at cases which involve “command level” responsibility. Justice Delayed, Justice Denied? Memorial lawyer Dina Vedernikova said Moscow prosecutors have been slow to answer requests for information on the 30 new cases now being considered by the court. “You have started to get this refusal for all of Chechnya cases,” she says. “The problem is that the government refuses to forward the investigative file to the [European] court.” Judges have promised to speed things up regarding Chechnya, putting all these on a fast track. But in Strasbourg, “fast track” is a very relative concept. “It means they will be heard in four years, rather than nine,” says Ms Vedernikova. The few cases of abuse that have come to Russian courts have faced extraordinary problems, chiefly over the apparent reluctance of juries to convict. One example concerns two soldiers, Yevgeni Khudyakov and Sergei Arakcheyev, charged with killing three Chechen construction workers in 2000. According to prosecutors, the case is cut and dried. The soldiers stopped a bus carrying the men, ordered them to get out and lie on the road. Then each was shot in the head.
Last year the case came to trial in Rostov, a Russian town with a strong nationalist tradition. The jury declared the men innocent. Russia’s Supreme Court intervened, and ordered a retrial which was again held in Rostov. In October of this year, the soldiers were found innocent again.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has ordered a second retrial in another case, that of captain Eduard Ullman. In January 2002 troops under Ullman’s command opened fire on a car with civilian passengers, killing the driver who turned out to be an innocent school director. The survivors, including a pregnant woman, were taken to an abandoned house. But when captain Ullman radioed his headquarters, according to the testimony of soldiers who witnessed it, he was told to execute the survivors. The Chechens were ordered to leave the house, and then shot. Their bodies were put into the car which was set on fire. Captain Ullman and three other soldiers admitted the killings, but said they were following orders. In April 2004 a Rostov jury found Ullman and his subordinates innocent on all charges. In the first retrial, again in Rostov, another jury came to the same decision. The Supreme Court has now ordered a fresh retrial with a jury recruited from across southern Russia, not Rostov. The most publicized case has been that of Colonel Yuri Budanov, accused of abducting and killing an 18-year-old Chechen girl in 2000. The case caused a sensation because the girl had simply been walking on the street when Colonel Budanov, a decorated tank commander, abducted her, drove her to his office, and inside beat her to death. Budanov’s first trial found him not guilty by reason of insanity. When a retrial was ordered by the Supreme Court in 2003, he was found guilty and jailed for ten years. Human rights groups say these cases do not go far enough, because none deals with command level crimes. They say the big unanswered question about some atrocities is whether they were approved by the higher-ups. Allegations of a Massacre Most sensational of the 30 new cases being studied by European judges is an alleged massacre by Interior Ministry forces at the village of Novye Aldy, near Grozny, in 2000. On February 4, according to Memorial, a unit of Interior Ministry OMON Special Forces arrived and began asking for papers. The villagers felt they had nothing to fear as rebel units had not been active in the area. What happened next is hotly contested. Memorial says it has sworn testimony that some of the soldiers went berserk. Some began shooting in the air, others demanded money. People who could not produce their identity cards were shot down. One woman, whose statement has been passed to the European Court by Memorial, tells of how soldiers demanded she give them money. She went into her house with one, and then tried to hide behind a water heater, but was discovered by a soldier. He put a gun to her head and she pleaded for her life. The plea worked, but then she heard gunfire and went outside to see relatives shot dead. Next, she heard her husband arriving in the backyard, and shouted in Chechen for him to run away, saving his life. By day’s end, say Memorial, more than 80 civilians lay dead. A local human rights investigator videoed the corpses and Memorial conducted dozens of interviews, passing the material to Russian prosecutors. They say prosecutors did nothing. The European Court and the Challenge of Chechnya The European Court was set up to monitor compliance with the European Convention of Human Rights. Its remit is to decide whether states have met their obligation to respect the rights of people within their jurisdiction. The Court can point to impressive victories, notably a string of judgments against Britain over its Northern Ireland policy in the 1970s, Turkey over its treatment of the Kurds, and the Irish government over its discrimination against homosexuals. But Russia is likely to be a tougher test. Firstly, Moscow is at war in Chechnya and is not inclined to risk the morale of its armed forces by probing abuses. Secondly, other states have abided by the Council of Europe’s rules because, although it is not connected to the European Union, membership of the Council is essential before accession to the EU can be considered. Russia, however, does not expect to join the EU and EU nations therefore have little leverage over Moscow. The issue of Chechnya has already strained relations between Russia and the Council of Europe. In April 2000, in response to Moscow’s offensive in Chechnya, the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly suspended Russia’s voting rights. But calls for the Council to go further, and suspend or expel Russia were turned down by the Committee of Ministers, a gathering of the foreign ministers of the 56-nation body, which has the ultimate sanction. No nation has ever been suspended by the Council, and members are loath to carry out such a drastic measure. In 2002 the Assembly’s human rights rapporteur Lord Judd, a frequent visitor to Chechnya, blamed Moscow for continuing to ignore abuses. In January 2003 he resigned in protest at Moscow’s determination to go ahead with a referendum on a new constitution despite the province being too war-torn for voting to be safe. Later that year the Assembly called for the Council to set up an international war crimes court, along the lines of the UN court in The Hague, to look at abuses in the province. But Russia’s representative on the Committee of Ministers rejected the proposal. On November 29 and 30 of this year, the Committee of Ministers held a meeting to supervise the compliance of member states with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. On the agenda was both Russia’s obligation to hold genuine investigations into security force abuses, and its failure to cooperate with the Court regarding future cases. This was the second meeting at which the Committee had examined Russia's response to the judgments, and for the second time it did not agree a resolution on the subject. Hardliners believe that the Council must ensure that members comply with the Court’s rulings in order to preserve its credibility – and that Russia should ultimately be expelled if it refuses fully to investigate abuses it is found guilty of. Others insist that expulsion will only worsen the situation and remove what power the Council has to moderate the behaviour of a member state. They say that in the past countries have complied with human rights rulings not as a result of public threats but through quiet diplomacy.
The gradualists got some encouragement this September, when Russian president Vladimir Putin said on a live TV call-in show that there had been human rights violations by both sides in Chechnya, and that he would work to find out who was responsible. However, the statement comes half a decade after many of these abuses were reported. Since 1999 Chechnya has seen a full-scale armed conflict notable for the brutality with which it has been fought. The European Court of Human Rights has demonstrated that human rights law can provide an effective way of regulating the conduct of internal armed conflict in the absence of any mechanism to apply the laws of war. Now the Council of Europe will have to demonstrate that it has the authority to ensure that the judgments are implemented.
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