A Chechen woman carries her child past Russian troops in Grozny

FRANKFURT, October 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Human rights groups Wednesday, October 8, accused the West of ignoring blatant and state-sanctioned abuses in Russia for the sake of improving relations with President Vladimir Putin, as Russian rights watch-dogs released a book documenting hundreds of cases of civilians killed or abducted by Russian troops over a small stretch of the war in Chechnya.

Speaking at the world's largest book fair in Frankfurt, which this year is turning the literary spotlight on Russia, advocates said human rights abuses were still rife despite some improvements over the past few years, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The accusations, centering on the Chechen conflict, freedom of information, the situation of women and children in jail and ethnic minorities, came from Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders and the Glasnost Foundation, a Moscow-based organization dedicated to protecting freedoms.

Amnesty's Peter Franck said it was a "scandal" that at E.U.-Russia talks in Saint Petersburg earlier this year, the European leaders "were just pleased to get Chechnya mentioned in the final declaration" -- but in reference to drugs.

He said they preferred to focus on Russia's role in the war on terror than on what was happening in the troubled Caucasus republic.

Franck said that although the situation in Russia had improved in the past 20 years, notably with laws to protect rights, "practice and bureaucracy are still working like the old system."

"There is still a significant deficit in the culture of human rights," he told a press conference.

Children were often jailed for minor offences; police were corrupt, often because they were badly paid; too many women were in jail; ethnic minorities were regularly harassed.

In Chechnya, there were still disappearances, killings and rapes, he said, adding that this year, around 240 people had disappeared by May 2003 alone and that was only according to official figures.

"A Friendly Chat"

Glasnost Foundation head Alexei Simonov said Western countries understood pressure on Russia to be "a friendly chat" with Putin who would assure them that human rights abuses were not his fault.

Juergen Doeschner, of Reporters without Borders, said many leaders in the West believed that although Russia was not yet fully democratic, at least it was "on the right track."

"From the point of view of freedom of the press and freedom of opinion, we believe it is on the wrong track," he stressed.

Doeschner accused Putin of trying to control and exploit the media which would feel under increasing pressure ahead of next year's elections.

Pressure on journalists came from local governments and corrupt businesses too.

Prosecutions for reports deemed as unacceptable did not always end in a conviction, but forced reporters into a kind of self-censorship, he said.

Doeschner also singled out Chechnya, pointing to official restrictions placed on journalists covering the region and highlighting the case of Ali Astamirov, a reporter of Chechen origin who has worked for AFP and has been missing since being kidnapped in neighboring Ingushetia in July 2003.

An anti-Chechnya war Russian journalist dismissed Sunday, September 28, as "a political scandal" the fair administration decision to retract an invitation to him to the much-celebrated event.

"The Frankfurt Fair administration has recently sent me a letter in which it regretted retracting an invitation extended months ago to participate in the prestigious fair along with a Russian media delegation," the German Der Spiegel magazine quoted as saying Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the Moscow biweekly Novaya Gazeta.

"People Live Here"

Meanwhile, Russian human rights watch-dogs issued a direct challenge to Putin Wednesday by releasing a book documenting hundreds of cases of civilians killed or abducted in Chechnya.

The first volume of "People Live Here" - a sign frequently posted by civilians over the rubble of buildings in the republic's capital Grozny - will be released to the public at large at the Frankfurt book fair on Sunday, October 12.

The 542-page volume covers abuses recorded from eyewitness accounts by activists working in Chechnya from July to December 2000 - a period in which Russia's main attack on the Chechen Caucasus republic had been completed.

It opens with a quote from Putin recorded during his October 2001 visit to Brussels in which the visibly agitated Russian leader brushed aside a reporter's question about rights abuses in Chechnya.

 "Whose rights" are we abusing, Putin demanded. "Give me names, records, family names. We should be speaking the same language instead of using cliches," he argued.

 "In part, this work was provoked by Putin's comments," said political commentator and author Viktor Shenderovich, who contributed a biting back-sleeve summery to the text.

The volume documents the cases of 489 Chechens killed during the six-month stretch.

This includes 70 fighters who died in fighting and the book's authors assume that most of the rest were civilians killed by Russian troops.

It then lists the cases of hundreds of people abducted in the war and interviews with their families and other eyewitnesses.

The authors said most of the abductions and killings have been officially confirmed by prosecutors but for the large part never reported by Russian media.

 "This is not a work of literature -- this is a book that was dictated to us by the people of Chechnya," said one of the volumes co-authors Dmitry Grushkin.

 "No on will ever be able to say anything more specific or tragic about Chechnya than this book," Grigory Yavlinsky, a presidential candidate and head of the liberal opposition Yabloko party, told reporters.

The small mountainous republic has been ravaged by conflict since 1994, with just three years of relative peace after the first war between Russian forces and Chechen fighters ended in August 1996 and the second broke out in October 1999.

At least 100,000 civilians and 10,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been killed in both wars, but human rights groups have said the real numbers could be much higher.