Wall Street Journal Europe

November 7, 2000

[for personal use only]

PUNISH RUSSIA FOR RAPING CHECHNYA

By Rachel Denber, acting director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch.

Time's up for the European Union on Russia. For months it has dragged its feet, trying to avoid calling Russia to account for its ghastly conduct in Chechnya. When President Vladimir Putin went to Paris last week, the EU should have let him know that there will be hell to pay for this kind of behavior. Alas, the opportunity was wasted.

Hell is exactly what it's like in Chechnya right now, especially for males under the age of 60. Russian forces detain them on a massive scale, accusing them of rebel collaboration. At detention centers throughout the region, police systematically torture Chechen men -- and some women -- to coerce testimony or confessions, or simply, it seems, out of wanton sadism. Human Rights Watch documented this pattern of abuse in dozens of interviews with former detainees. Their accounts, which we presented in a report published October 26, are truly harrowing.

Chechens consistently told us of being greeted at detention centers by being forced to run a gauntlet of guards who beat them with nightsticks, metal bars, whatever they could find. This was how Aindi Kovtorashvili was killed in January at the now-infamous Chernokozovo prison. When his family found him in a Russian morgue after a three-week search, his corpse had a hole in the head and fractured hands. Even a 14-year-old mentally retarded boy was not spared the cruel "greeting" of the gauntlet.

Beatings in 'Men's Places'

Russian forces at a military base beat one Chechen, we'll call him "Idris,"on the genitals during interrogation. Trying to retain his dignity, he told Human Rights Watch: "They beat me in men's places." Such beatings, which for Idris caused permanent damage, were common practice: A doctor in one regional hospital reported about 30 cases of trauma injuries to the genitals.

Despite an ingrained reluctance in Chechnya to discuss sexual violence, we also learned about the rape of men and women in Russian custody. Two sisters were raped while detained in a pit near a border crossing. A 19-year-old mentally retarded woman was repeatedly raped at a military base.

These arbitrary mass arrests, torture, and "disappearances" are among the primary reasons why thousands of displaced Chechens are terrified to return to their homes. They continue to live in squalid conditions in neighboring Ingushetia, where the international community is forced to support them because the Russians won't. The fear of rearrest on their way to the hospital even prevents torture victims from seeking much-needed treatment.

Russian authorities claim they are conducting "criminal investigations." But there are no lawyers, no evidence is presented, and no one seems to go to trial. The slightest irregularity in a passport, or being found in a neighborhood outside one's official residence, serves as cause for arrest. Once in custody, a bribe is almost the only way out. Predatory Russian officials, often abetted by Chechen intermediaries, demand anywhere between $80 and $5,000 for release. This happened so frequently that in many cases, detention itself seemed to be motivated by the promise of financial gain, rather than by the need to identify rebel collaborators.

Information on detainees is a valuable commodity. One of the saddest scenes is the crowds of family members outside prisons and detention facilities in Chechnya, clinging to any information they can find, ready to buy lists of detainees to see if their loved ones are on them.

The Russian government knows it has dirty secrets to hide, and uses clumsy cover-up tactics to conceal them. In February it bused out hundreds of detainees from Chernokozovo in preparation for a visit from Council of Europe monitors. As soon as the monitors left, the inmates were bused back.

Why would Russia, a Council of Europe member state, think it could get away with such brazen conduct? Because Russia has gotten away with it before. In the 1994-1996 Chechen war, Russian troops treated Chechen detainees exactly the same way they are doing now. Moreover, all around Russia, police torture is an everyday fact of life in criminal investigations -- a fact we documented in a 1999 report on the practice. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that a country that so systematically thumbs its nose at the rule of law during peacetime should do it during war as well.

Establishing Accountability

The EU has issued a lot of condemnations about torture in Chechnya, but like the United States, will not take concrete action for fear of jeopardizing its relations with Russia. Despite instructions by EU foreign ministers in December, member states for the most part declined to send representatives to the region to bear witness to the abuse (in sharp contrast to their practice in Kosovo). To its credit, in April the EU sponsored a resolution at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, urging Russia to launch a national commission of inquiry that would establish accountability for abuse. But now, six months later, there's no commission, nor even a public investigation, about torture.

EU member states have declined for months to file an interstate complaint against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights. They claim that Russia's human rights envoy to Chechnya, whose staff in the region collects human rights complaints but has no prosecutorial authority, should be given time to prove itself. But we don't need more time to conclude that there is no commission. The EU member states, which were a leading force for international justice in the Balkan wars, should at least make use of the European Court -- and next time Mr. Putin comes to Paris the EU should let him know they plan to do so.

Next month European ministers will descend on Rome to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the European human rights convention. They will be searching for new ways to improve the European system of human rights protection. They would do well to start by using the ones that already exist. European credibility on human rights depends on it.