Two children fetch water at the Sputnik refugee camp in Ingushetia

MOSCOW, January 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Russian human rights groups on Tuesday, January 21, denounced a “war against Chechen refugees” in neighboring Ingushetia following a wave of sweeps they said were intended to force the refugees to return to their homeland against their will.

The interventions by Russian armed forces in the camps in Ingushetia, just across the border from Chechnya “have become increasingly frequent, and are on almost the same scale as those in Chechnya itself,” Svetlana Gannushkina, of the Memorial human rights group, told a press conference, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

“The Chechen conflict is broadening. They’re waging a virtual war against the refugees in Ingushetia,” said Lidia Grafova, director of the Migration human rights group and also a member of a government commission on migrations.

The Memorial spokeswoman cited a January 6 operation in which four young Chechens were arrested at the Satsita camp at Sleptsovsk by armed men wearing camouflage.

Two of the four have not been seen since.

Around 17,000 Chechens currently live in the camps, according to official figures.

Several thousand refugees were persuaded to return to Chechnya last year under a policy designed to clear the camps by the end of 2002.

Russian authorities insisted the returns were voluntary, but human rights groups said that Russian troops had applied strong pressure on the refugees to leave the camps.

Moscow argues that the situation in Chechnya has returned to normal.

It is organising a referendum on a new Chechen constitution in March, to be followed by presidential and parliamentary elections.

European Envoy to Chechnya Under Fire From Russian Rights Group

Russian human rights activists reprimanded a top European rights envoy to Chechnya Tuesday for accepting too readily assurances from the Kremlin that the situation in the republic was in hand.

As envoy Frank Judd prepared for a new mission to the war-torn republic, Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial human rights group, expressed discontent with the PACE-Duma working group.

The group combines representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Russian lower house of parliament.

“The activities of the group dissatisfy us, at times deeply. The group is too often content with purely formal replies from the Russian authorities about violations of human rights in Chechnya,” Orlov told reporters.

“This indicates that their work is not serious or thorough enough,” he charged.

Judd met several senior Russian officials Tuesday ahead of an evening flight to the southern city of Mineralnye Vody, the stopover point for a day-long visit to neighbouring Chechnya on Wednesday, January 22.

After talks with Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov and deputy Dmitry Rogozin, leader of the Russian delegation to the PACE-Duma group, he called on the Kremlin to ensure that the Chechens be allowed to play an informed role in the upcoming constitutional referendum.

“If we want to have a durable and lasting solution in the Chechen republic, it is terribly important that the people are given an opportunity to identify what has been proposed to them,” he said, urging extensive media coverage of the controversial poll.

The referendum is widely seen as a bid by Moscow to show that the situation in Chechnya is under control despite almost daily clashes between federal forces and independence seeking fighters.

Following his “very good discussions” with the Duma representatives, Judd said he was due later to meet the Kremlin’s top advisor on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky.

Orlov said that his group too planned to meet Judd, political rapporteur on Chechnya for PACE, before he left for southern Russia.

He noted that the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg last week accepted to consider complaints by Chechens represented by Memorial about violation of their rights by federal troops in 1999-2000, and warned that the number of complaints from Chechens was likely to increase soon.

The Strasbourg court has received between 120 and 150 complaints regarding violations by federal forces in Chechnya from various human rights groups, he said.

Recourse to Strasbourg was not a matter of choice, he stressed.

“Unfortunately all possibility of defending human rights in Russian courts has been exhausted.

“We would prefer Russian courts to settle these matters, we would be very glad not to have to appeal to Strasbourg, but unfortunately we are forced to do so,” he said.

The Kremlin’s special representative for human rights in Chechnya, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, claimed the Strasbourg court’s decision to accept the Chechen complaints as an attempt to put political pressure on Russia, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia has been at war in Chechnya on and off since 1994.

The republic gained de facto independence in 1996 but Moscow ordered troops back into Chechnya in 1999.