Chechnya was equated with Yugoslavia

Chechnya was equated with Yugoslavia
BY: Igor Sedykh, Musa Muradov
Kommersant, No 38, p.1

PACE announced the plan to organize international tribunal to investigate the war crimes and humanity crimes in Chechnya

The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) approved a draft resolution late on Monday, containing a proposal to set up an international tribunal to investigate the war crimes and humanity crimes in the Chechen republic, similar to the one dealing with the former Yugoslavia. The resolution is supposed to be discussed at the PACE's next session in the end of March.

In the year 2000 some of the PACE members already tried to pass a resolution on human rights violations in Chechnya. But then only the Netherlands' deputies supported the proposal submitted by the members of the Denmark's delegation. In November 2002 Akhmed Zakayev, the representative of the Chechen rebels' leader Aslan Maskhadov, met with the Prosecutor General of the UN tribunal on war crimes Carla del Ponte, who is the chief prosecutor on the trial of the former Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic. In Mr. Zakayev's words, the Prosecutor General advised Chechens to "begin collecting the proof on human rights violations in the republic". Now this evidence may prove to be useful. The project of the resolution, proposing to set up an international tribunal on Chechnya, was prepared by the delegation of the German parliament. The draft text contains a proposal "to recommend the Council of Europe's Ministerial Conference to consider the possibility of proposing the world community to institute a special tribunal on war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Chechen Republic, modeled on the International Criminal Tribunal in former Yugoslavia, in case the Russian authorities do not intensify efforts to persecute those responsible for human rights violations and to stop the lawlessness in the Chechen republic."

However, the draft resolution denounced the rebels as well, saying that "they must immediately stop their terrorist activities". The document also calls for cutting off any assistance to them.

The PACE's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights holds that the authorities in Chechnya failed to provide the guarantees of human rights for the Chechnya's residents, which is the main cause of the continuing violence in the republic.

A representative of the Chechen separatists in the Western Europe Usman Ferzauli was skeptical about the prospects of the PACE deputies' move. "Their [PACE deputies'] mood may change at any moment, depending on the current state of affairs. It would be better if Russia and Chechnya settle their problems themselves. The West is most probably concerned with its own interests rather than with the fate of the Chechens," Mr. Ferzauli told Kommersant.