Chechens Still Awaiting Missing Sons

Many Chechen mothers still cling to hopes of discovering the fate of, their sons who vanished during the Russian military adventures in Chechnya

"I don't know what happened to him," one Chechen women told Reuters on Thursday, March 1, with tears running down her face.

She held out the passport of her son, kidnapped after he went for a walk one evening three years ago.

"Nobody has told me anything," she added in a shuddering voice breaking with emotion.

Her anguish is shared by thousands of families in the republic where many people disappeared without trace in the two Russian military campaigns since the mid-1990s.

International human rights watchdogs said in a recent joint statement that rape, torture and extrajudicial executions by Russian troops have become everyday occurrences in Chechnya.

A report by Russia's Memorial rights group and French-based FIDH asserted last year that hostage-taking by Russian security forces was widespread.

It also cited systematic torture in secret prisons and illegal detention centers, noting that arbitrary charges were regularly brought against innocent civilians.

International human rights groups have long expressed concern about the disappearances and called on the authorities to do more to investigate and prevent them.

Chechnya 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 -- about 10 percent of the population -- are estimated to have been killed in both wars, but human rights groups have said the real numbers could be much higher.

Pain

Thomas Hammarberg, the European commissioner for human rights, said more efforts were needed to discover what happened to the missing.

"As long as their fate has not been decided there will be a wound open in society," he told a crowd of parents holding photos of missing sons and daughters.

Hammarberg is currently on a fact-finding mission to Chechnya.

During their meeting, Rezvan Taptalashev, the leader of Vedeno, a ramshackle town in the Caucasus mountains, told Hammarberg of a brighter future for the town under Moscow-backed President Ramzan Kadyrov.

But on the streets of the town, around 50 km (30 miles) south-east of the Chechen capital Grozny, the pain had been stubbornly etched onto people's faces.

A group of pensioners stamped their feet in the cold to keep warm.

Overhead, Russian military helicopters scanned the surrounding woods and dropped flares.

"There are no jobs, no real compensation. They talk of hope," said one resident, pointing at a building where the town's leader sat talking to Hammarberg.

"But when will that hope arrive?"

On Tuesday, February 27, Hammarberg confronted Kadyrov with accusations of kidnapping and torture by the troubled republic's police force.

"The families of survivors, of the kidnapped have the right to know" what happened, he told the strongman.

Hammarberg complained of the chronic failure to bring to justice those responsible for so-called "disappearances" and to investigate accusations of ill-treatment during arrests.

"People say they are arrested, tortured, sometimes with electric shocks, they are asked to sign confessions and in some cases, these confessions are not true, they are made up," he added.

"This has to be stopped, it undermines the credibility of the system."

Ramzan runs a widely feared militia which is suspected by human rights campaigners of the widespread use of torture.