The Moscow Times
Troops on Orders to Clean Up Their Act
by Yevgenia Borisova, Staff Writer

The commander of federal troops in Chechnya issued new rules for conducting the cleansing operations, ordering troops to identify themselves, be polite and provide a list of all the people they detain.

Lieutenant General Vladimir Moltenskoi's order, made public Friday, is a startling acknowledgment of how widespread the abuses have been in Chechnya and appears to be the first serious effort to stop them.

"We are increasing the responsibility of all officials so people will not go missing without a trace," Moltenskoi was quoted by Interfax as telling journalists. "There are facts showing that during special operations, perhaps through the fault of individual commanders, innocent or perhaps not so innocent people go missing."

During the cleansing operations, troops sweep through a village looking for suspected rebels and, their critics say, taking revenge on the local population for their unsuccessful campaign to establish control over the republic. The troops have been accused of beating and torturing civilians, looting, extorting money for not detaining someone, and taking people away in vehicles whose license plates are smeared with dirt.

Thousands of Chechen civilians have gone missing or been found dead after such operations, human rights organizations say.

The introduction to the new order, Order No. 80, which was provided to The Moscow Times by the Memorial human rights group, says that unlawful actions by the military "annihilate the efforts of commanders to enforce security, law and order and favorable conditions for restoring social and economic life, boost the anti-Russian mood and give the leaders of the illegal armed formations additional opportunities to bring new members and supporters into their ranks."

Human rights activists and local Chechen administrators welcomed Moltenskoi's order, but were skeptical that it would be followed.

"The potential of the order is big, but in Russia the strictness of orders has always been compensated for by their nonfulfillment," Memorial board member Alexander Cherkasov said Friday by telephone. "Moltenskoi promised us back in January that the ordeals with the cleansing operations would stop, but nothing changed."

Under the new instructions, cleansing operations -- including operations targeting a specific person, such as the one in which famous kidnapper Arbi Barayev was killed last year in his home in Yermolovka -- are to take place only on Moltenskoi's personal orders.

Representatives of the local administration, imams, local policemen, district military prosecutors, Federal Security Service officers and military commandants are to be "invited to the headquarters of the leader of the operation in the region."

The troops, except in rare cases, are not to wear masks, and before entering a house they are required to give their name and rank. They are to "exercise tact, constraint and politeness" when dealing with civilians, the order says.

All military vehicles are to have visible license plates. At the end of an operation, a list of any people detained is to be provided to the local administration, along with lists of arms, drugs, explosives, money or other property that has been confiscated.

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman on Chechnya, said the new order was "unprecedented" and gave a good picture of the "unpleasant facts" of how troops have carried out the cleansing operations, Interfax reported.

Putin's special representative for human rights in Chechnya, Vladimir Kalamanov, told Interfax the order showed a real effort by the government to strengthen the rule of law in Chechnya. He said his office would distribute it throughout the republic.

Memorial's Cherkasov linked the order to a meeting between Memorial activists and "representatives of the federal government" in Yastrzhembsky's office on March 22.

"This order includes only the minimum of what we demanded," Cherkasov said. "Whether this order is the result of political will to stop the brutality in Chechnya, we will see soon."

Shirvani Yasayev, head of the Urus-Martan district administration, said in a telephone interview Friday that a similar decree was issued by the Prosecutor General's Office last summer and "it did not change the situation much."

Neither Yasayev nor Shamil Burayev, head of the Achkhoi-Martan district administration, where a cruel mopping-up operation last summer sent thousands of Assinovskaya and Sernovodsk residents fleeing to Ingushetia, had seen the order Friday.

"From what you said about the order, it is very good," Burayev said by telephone. "But will it be fulfilled?"

Diederik Lohman, director of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, said that a real mechanism must be put in place to hold the military responsible for its crimes. But Lohman said he could not see how control over the cleansing operations would be exercised. The order does not say that local civilian authorities and clergy can accompany the troops during the sweeps.

Alexander Machevsky, a spokesman for Yastrzhembsky's office, said holding troops responsible will not be a problem. "The population will have the right to complain," Machevsky said in a telephone interview. "And anyone who is found to have violated the order or the Criminal Code during the operations will be prosecuted.

"We are going to make public to the troops the names of any soldiers and officers who commit such crimes. It will have a big disciplinary effect," he said.

Yastrzhembsky said Friday that 33 servicemen, including four officers, have been convicted of various crimes against civilians in Chechnya, Interfax reported.

Lohman said the numbers were "ridiculous."

"Look, thousands of civilians were killed in Chechnya and thousands disappeared without a trace and only about 30 have been punished?" he said.

The military may have trouble convincing Chechen civilians that they can now trust the troops or that they should report troops who disobey Moltenskoi's order.

"If no one physically controls the groups of soldiers when they are checking out houses, they will keep doing what they used to do -- robbing, insulting us, killing and kidnapping," said Bedredi, 49, who recently fled to Moscow from Argun to escape the sweeps. "No one will complain to the people who collect at the headquarters of the commanders of the operation since we all know the fate of those who complain -- people in masks come and kill you."

Zaina, 52, who fled to Moscow from Stariye Atagi, also said she doubts the troops will change their ways. "They should just stop the cleansing operations altogether," she said.

Rules on special operations connected to Council of Europe?

Chechnya Weekly - The Jamestown Foundation

Recent developments on controlling zachistki may well have been connected with the meetings of the Interparliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Council of Europe taking place at the time in the Tauride Palace in Petersburg.

On March 29, the online daily Gazeta.ru reported: "Already in June of this year, the Council of Europe intends to adopt special resolutions that will seriously restrict the antiterrorist activity of states belonging to the Council of Europe, including Russia." In particular, Gazeta.ru went on, the resolutions will concern "the inadmissibility of torture, of inhumane language or of language demeaning the human worth of an individual, of 'arbitrariness in any form,' the respect for the right to life, the right to a just trial and the nonextradition of a person if such extradition were to threaten him with execution."

As Peter Schieder, the present chair of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, observed to Gazeta.ru: "The Council of Europe has always seen the actions of the Russian authorities in Chechnya as representing an antiterrorist operation, but we have always said that during the conducting of such operations it is inadmissible that peaceful citizens should suffer."