From beyond the grave: A searing indictment of Putin's protegé - The Independent »
Posted By gamahuche 6 months, 3 weeks ago in NewsThe abductions in Chechnya started nearly a decade ago. In 2000, Russian forces took control of practically the entire territory of the republic, and started extensive mop-up operations in villages.
Thousands of murders and abductions took place; these operations were declared to be an efficient method in the fight against rebels. In reality, however, the troops and police were looting the houses of unprotected civilians, at times taking away everything from them, from cars and furniture to shampoos and female underwear.
Most horrifically of all, women were raped in front of their male relatives, and all the men were detained, from teenagers to old men: they were either cruelly beaten, or released for ransom, or else they disappeared forever.
Large-scale "mop-up" operations stopped after 2003, but the abductions did not. Most often, one or two people would be taken from their homes in the middle of the night. Some were fortunate to return home barely alive after several days or weeks of cruel beating and torture – always ransomed by their relatives. But if the family of the abducted person could not gather the necessary sum or find the mediator, a dead body would be found some time later, or the victim would disappear for good. There were also those who – after their disappearance – appeared in court and were sentenced for grave crimes, despite their insistence that they had only confessed under prolonged torture.
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gamahuche
"I would rather be a square peg than fit in a pigeon hole" -
an essay which won me the "Lamb Essay Prize" at the Religious ...
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gamahuche6 months, 3 weeks ago
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This is a very important story. Unfortunately there's nothing new about it except thaat this is a fresh murder of a very brave woman who dared to stand for truth and fairness and honesty and paid the price. It is essential that the world know what is going on in Chechnya and who is responsible - and the fact is that very little news does get out of there. With the murder of Natalya Estemirova there will, alas, be even less.
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gamahuche6 months, 3 weeks ago
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OOPS SILLY ME!...
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I was in a VERY big hurry posting this because of work commitments but I thought I had all the ends tied together but what I did omit to make clear was that Natalya Estemirova was herself abducted and found murdered with 2 bullet-holes in her..
She was abducted and murdered on Wednesday, hours after her organisation backed calls for Vladimir Putin to face trial over atrocities in Chechnya.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/r...
Sorry about that!
Now I wish that I could say "ENJOY"..
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gamahuche6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Currently the story is impossible to access at the Independent so I will post the rest here..
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The whole article is an extract from a 2,600-word article by Natalya Estemirova on the situation in Chechnya written in August 2008 but never published.. [One has to wonder why! But maybe she wouldn't have been with us this long if it had been]]
[story continued:
Many things would change when Ramzan Kadyrov became President of Chechnya in 2007. Large-scale reconstruction began; Grozny changed by the day, its streets newly covered with asphalt and houses boasting plastic window frames and fresh plastering. Observers started talking about the wonders of the young President. From the inside the renovated houses did not look so beautiful, with no interior works done, and no proper utilities ensured. Since then, Kadyrov has attempted to engineer a further change of ideas. The President is advancing his campaign for a "revival of spiritual traditions"... making women and young girls "dress properly", and above all wear headscarves in public.
Meanwhile, Kadyrov invites Russian pop celebrities to Chechnya and gives them lavish presents. No one dares to ask how these visits are sponsored, or how they comply with the Chechen "tradition". No one dares to object to anything Kadyrov says or does, just as no one dared to object to Stalin's words or deeds in the former Soviet Union. Peace in the republic and the successes in fighting terrorism are widely advertised; yet in reality rebel fighters frequently attack policemen, the numerous branches of the military structures constantly clash, and people keep being abducted. The main difference now is that many disappear only for some days and return beaten, terrified and therefore mostly silent.
Political observers claim Kadyrov is ruling over Chechnya independently of Russia. Is it really so? Tens of thousands of Chechens pining away in Russian prisons would not agree. Neither would the hundreds of thousands of war victims, or the relatives of the killed and missing. And the outflow of Chechen refugees to European countries is not subsiding. On the contrary: more and more people are trying to leave. A dictatorship is being cemented in a small European territory.
UN and EU officials compare the situation with the events of 2000, and note indubitable improvements. But what was the reason for destroying so many cities and villages, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and... introducing state terror justified as a "fight against terrorism"? Was it not to crush the society and force it to make an artificial choice between democracy and stability? The Kremlin is satisfied with the current suppression in Chechnya of any attempts to act and think independently.-
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mikescholtesComment removed: Hard Banned
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gamahuche6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Lets just be clear too that this is in fact all part of the same story as the murder of
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Alexander Litvinenko - see here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/nov/25/guardia...-
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Candida6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Yes, it's the same story, and it also links to the US assassination squads we read about these days. The story reminds me of the 1950s Eastern Europe: the knock on the door in the middle of the night, people disappearing, some being tortured, some never to surface again, fake trials and the rest. In those days I used to think that the Soviet Union was evil and the US was good. The lines have blurred quite a bit since then. I guess they use the same methods in their separate "wars on terror." It's so sad.
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gamahuche6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Which in turn was also connected with the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and the Chechen question.
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Litvinenko wrote two books, the first, The FSB Blows up Russia (2001), implicated the security services in a series of apartment block bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people. The attacks were blamed on Chechen rebels, but his book echoed fears of state involvement as a means of justifying the second war in Chechnya. The other was The Criminal Group from the Lubyanka (2002). However, other accusations, such as that FSB agents trained al-Qaida operatives in Dagestan and were involved in the September 11 attacks, did little for his credibility.
Before his death he was said to be investigating last month's assassination in Moscow of his acquaintance, the investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya (obituary, October 9).-
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hyperbola6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Pretty clear that there is still an "oligarchy" in Russia that doesn't differ that much in their practices from the old soviet oligarchy.
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I have been reading (in the spanish language press) some articles by reporters who had personally interviewed both Politkovskaya and Estemirova before their deaths.
Scary.
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gamahuche6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Anna Politkovskaya was very much a forerunner,in turn, of Natalya Estemirova in bearing witness to the horrors being perpetrated in Chechnnya.
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Anna Politovskaya was of course also assassinated, sensationally. Her obituary is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/oct/09/guardia... -
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gamahuche6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Part of what is still going on on a full-time basis in Grozny/Chechnya is the abduction of women who are taken off and forced to marry.
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There are also a great many women who are kidnapped and never seen again or heard of again.
This is a COMMON fact of life in Chechnya and neighbouring Ingushetia. -
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jovial6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Putin's buddy, huh? Well it sometimes amazes me that Republican's tout Putin, and Medvedev as people that they agree with because they are leery of Obama. I never trusted any of them. They are a bunch of ruthless killers and it is widely known there is no fondness for minorities in Russia.
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fempatriot6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Americans have been fed such a steady diet of propaganda, it's almost impossible to put forth something different from the party line and have it understood. Having said that, I'll say it: After "Communism fell" many of the so-called Russian commissars emigrated to Israel because they were Jewish. Then there was a concerted effort by Israel to grab all the Russian resources they could. These "oligarchs" were Israelis. Our government deceptively called them "Russian mafia." Putin went after them and managed to jail a couple, one biggie fled to Britain where he continues to wage war against Russia. Read the book: By Way of Deception by Victor Ostrovsky, ex-Mossad agent, and you will find that the Israeli Mossad is expert at killing someone and making it look as if someone else killed that person. (false flag.) They conned the USA into bombing Libya that way by planting a "false flag" transmitter in Libya. Read the book. Ostrovsky left the Mossad because he found them morally bankrupt as they wage clandestine war against all the nations/states except their own. We never know the truth about something—only what the opposing forces write. We don't know who murdered this woman, but it probably was not the ones being publicly blamed. (I'm not saying Putin and the Russian government have not been wrong at times or heavy handed--just trying to explain why they are sometimes so extreme because of outside provocations.) Governments lie. Our government lies. Our own CIA appears to commit horrific crimes all over the world--assassinations, drug trafficking, etc. Read: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins and you will learn that time and again, we, the USA loan money to small countries and then make sure that they fail, so that we can grab their resources.
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