Janice Anderson - War Crimes and Atrocities

Guards at these detention camps, or ‘filtration points’, treat the inmates cruelly because they know that these illegal camps are not registered anywhere and are unlikely to be traced. Because they are not sanctioned by law, no records are kept of who is being detained and where. If the bodies of these detainees are found, they usually bear the scars of torture and violent death. Sometimes the bodies have been blown up so that they cannot be identified.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, there are now many people claiming that the Russians have set up a trade in corpses. Relatives have been known to pay as much as 100 to 3,000 dollars to have their relative’s corpses returned to them for burial. The wealth of the family of the kidnapped or arrested person determines the ransom they are asked to pay. If the amount is not paid, the captive faces the ‘death cave’, or torture chamber. Those who die under torture are sold back to their families, knowing full well that they will pay because it is vital under the Chechen belief to have a traditional funeral and burial.

The number of people that have gone missing from Chechnya is reportedly as high as 10,000 and possibly as many as 15,000 being held in refugee camps. The conditions inside these camps are appalling with inadequate makeshift shelters and a shortage of food, clean water, heating and many other basic essentials. The shelters are either tents, railway carriages or empty truck containers, and many are forced to pay extortionate rents to try and avoid the overcrowding. Many refugees who run out of money are forced to return to the war zones, putting their lives at even further risk. Because of the constant looting and, as in the capital Grozny, complete destruction, many of the refugees do not actually have any homes to return to.

Russia is not permitting humanitarian organizations to operate freely and is virtually blocking any direct assistance for the refugees so desperately in need of help. There are limited medical supplies and the Chechen children are not permitted to attend school.

Although many of the refugees are unsure how long their welcome will last, the majority told interviewers that they would not return to their homes – or what is left of them – unless the Russian soldiers leave. The same thing was heard again and again, ‘We are afraid for our male population, afraid we will have no husbands or sons’.

The bodies of people who had been lost since the beginning of 2001 have started to turn up in mass graves. The first grave was uncovered on 25 February, 2001, at Khan-Kala, near Grozny, where there is a Russian military base. There were 200 corpses in the mass grave. Their arms and legs had been tied up and the majority were wearing blindfolds. Many of the corpses bore signs of mutilation, including stab wounds, broken limbs, flayed body parts, severed fingertips and ears cut off.

Reeling from the shock of the first discovery, the Chechen people had to face another at Roshni-Chu. This grave bore the body of a one-year-old baby. Since then more mass graves have been uncovered, revealing the atrocities that have taken place. Local people who discovered a grave in  April 2002 in a mountain cave at Achkhoy-Martanovsky, reported that all the 100 bodies found there had been beheaded.

The discovery of these graves led to another grue-some detail; some of the bodies had had their internal organs removed. This opened the floodgates to speculation – what exactly had happened to these organs? There have been claims that the organs have been sold on the black market to be used in laboratories or as much sought-after transplants. Despite these allegations, as yet there is no organization to investigate these claims and get to the bottom of the missing organs.

The ongoing war has taken its toll on Chechnya and its people. Russian bombing has destroyed over 50,000 homes and out of the original 424 villages, 270 have been completely destroyed. Land mines and bombs have contaminated the agricultural lands of Chechnya, and threaten the future survival of a nation. Although Russia is trying to use the war against terrorism as an excuse for what is taking place in Chechnya, it is obvious that Putin is trying his hardest to cover up the atrocities that have really taken place. What is equally worrying, however, is the lack of a strong Western response to the continuing abuses of a people who are wounded by years of war.

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