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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE News Flash AI Index: EUR 46/001/2005 (Public) News Service No: 017 20 January 2005 Russian Federation: Human rights group threatened by security forces Amnesty International is extremely concerned that eight activists working for the human rights group the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society are in danger of being arbitrarily arrested, tortured and "disappeared". This follows the seizure today of their contact information by Russian security forces. Officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB) raided the organisation's offices in Nizhny Novgorod at about 5pm local time and seized documents containing the contact details of all the staff of the group's newspaper. The contact details of eight staff members living in Chechnya were among those seized. The security forces also took away the newspaper's registration documents and some editions of the newspaper. Earlier in the day, the regional branch of the FSB in Nizhny Novgorod summoned Stanislav Dmitrievskii, the head of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society for questioning. The FSB reportedly considers Stanislav Dmitrievskii a witness in a criminal case relating to materials published by the organization’s newspaper Pravozashchita. Details of the case are unclear but seem to relate to statements by Chechen opposition figures including Aslan Maskhadov and his UK-based envoy Akhmed Zakayev published by the organization’s newspaper. Amnesty International has reported on a worrying trend of Russian authorities targeting human rights defenders, activists and independent journalists, and in some cases subjecting them to extreme levels of harassment, "disappearances" and killings. Public Document **************************************** For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web: http://www.amnesty.org For latest human rights news view http://news.amnesty.org .

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Russia Chechnya
Russia Chechnya Population: 1,200,000 (Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Russian Federation, 2007, Inter-Agency Transitional Workplan for the North Caucasus. The population of Chechnya according to the 2002 Russian census was approximately 1,100,000.) Political Rights: 7 Civil Liberties: 7 Status: Not Free Overview: Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov was promoted to the Chechen premiership in March 2006 and continued to strengthen his hold on power in the republic. Critics like investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in October, have claimed that Kadyrov and his security forces torture suspected rebels, many of whom disappear without a trace. Rebel violence declined as Kadyrov consolidated his position, and two important rebel leaders were killed during the year, but the larger region remained unstable. Chechnya, a small, partly mountainous North Caucasus republic, has a history of armed resistance to Russian rule dating to the czarist period. In February 1944, the Chechens were deported en masse to Kazakhstan after Soviet leader Joseph Stalin accused them of collaborating with Nazi German forces. Officially rehabilitated in 1957 and allowed to return to their homeland, they remained politically suspect and were excluded from the region’s administration. After winning election as Chechnya’s president in October 1991, former Soviet air force Major General Dzhokhar Dudayev proclaimed Chechnya’s independence. Moscow responded with an economic blockade. In 1994, Russia began assisting Chechens opposed to Dudayev, whose rule was marked by growing corruption and the rise of powerful clans and criminal gangs. Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent 40,000 troops into Chechnya by mid-December of that year and attacked the capital, Grozny.
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The Future of the Caucasus After the Second Chechen War
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The Second Chechen War: the Information Component
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Bringing Peace to Chechnya? Assessments and Implications
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Putin's Colonial
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The War in Chechnya and Its Aftermath
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Radical Islam in Chechnya
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Russian Analytical Digest No 5
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