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Thousands of Chechen refugees live under deplorable
conditions
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MOSCOW,
May 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Thousands of refugees
from the war-torn southern Russian republic of Chechnya live in
battered tent camps in neighboring Ingushetia and refuse to return
home because of continuing insecurity, a U.N. official said Monday,
May 19.
"The
tent camps are in a bad state," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted
George Gyorke, an official with the U.N. High Commission for Refugees,
as saying.
He
added that between 15,000 and 17,000 Chechens were living in the
camps, while the rest live in private homes.
"People
want to go home, but don't because there isn't calm yet," he
said.
Russian
authorities said last summer that they would close down the refugee
camps in Ingushetia to demonstrate that the situation in Chechnya was
returning to normal after three years of war between Russian federal
government forces and Chechen fighters.
Most
of the refugees fled Chechnya's capital Grozny soon after fighting
broke out in October 1999.
But
they refuse to return because of continuing violence and the fact that
Grozny remains without running water and indoor plumbing, with
frequent electricity cuts, Gyorke said.
Chechens
voted on March 23
on a new constitution that Moscow hoped would put an end to Europe's
bloodiest civil conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people
in the past decade.
Two
suicide attacks that killed some 80 people in Chechnya last week
appeared to contradict an assertion by Russian President Vladimir
Putin that the conflict with Chechen fighters was over.
‘Responsibility’
Meanwhile,
leading Chechen fighter commander Shamil Basayev claimed Monday
responsibility for the two attacks that killed at least 80 people in
the Chechnya last week, asserting that such attacks were only “a
small part of the operations we have planned for this year.”
"Our
martyrs' two sabotage attacks are only a small part of the operations
we have planned for this year," Basayev said in a statement
issued under his nom de guerre Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris on the Kavkaz
Center website.
The
death toll from a bomb attack
in Chechnya on a pro-Russian government building rose to 52 on
May 13, and was expected to move even higher as rescue workers
searched the rubble for victims.
On
May 14, at least 30 people were killed
and 40 others injured when two women blew themselves up in the Middle
of a religious festival in the Chechnya.
Basayev
said his brigade "carried out two successful sabotage operations
against the Russian occupiers and their stooges -- the Chechen
national traitors."
“Sooner
or later, he and all the other national traitors, as well as the
Russian occupiers committing atrocities on our land will be
punished,” Basayev warned.
“We
claim the right to use any force and means to stop the genocide of the
Chechen people and free our homeland from the foreign power,” he
said, warning Chechen civilians to stay away from pro-Russian targets.
Basayev
has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in the
nearly four-year-old war in Chechnya, including the
hostage-taking at a Moscow theatre that left 119 civilians and 41 rebels dead in
October.
Meanwhile,
the top envoy of Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov said the former
president had nothing to do with the blasts and no connection with
Basayev.
The
attacks are "not the Chechen leadership's position nor our
methods," envoy Akhmed Zakayev told Echo Moscow radio by
telephone from London.
"Shamil
Basayev has no ties to any official structure in the Chechen republic,
but he is not stripped of the right to defend his homeland and to
choose which forms his struggle against the forces will take," he
said.
Last
week Putin formally submitted a bill to parliament offering amnesty to
all Chechen fighters who lay down their arms by August, excluding
foreigners and those accused of serious crimes -- including Maskhadov.
Envoy
Zakayev called the proposal a "farce" in an interview with
Echo Moscow and accused Putin of presenting the bill in an attempt to
convince world opinion the war was over.
