Statement by Mr. Akhmed Zakaev, Chairman of the ChRi Cabinet of Ministers
Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 22 June 2010
I welcome the report from Dick Marty and the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights on the situation in the Northern Caucasus, and in particular in the Chechen Republic, where I have very clear views as one of the parties to the military-political conflict about the underlying causes of the unending state terror.
I would state that no window dressing about the so-called "rejuvenated” Chechen Republic can serve as a compensation for 250 000 lives of our countrymen, sacrificed on the altar of freedom and independence of our motherland – or for the ongoing violence.
Hence the quotation from the esteemed Rudolf Bindig about the "need to establish a war tribunal to provide a legal evaluation in the Chechen Republic over the entire period of hostilities.”
Let me remind you that it is the absence of such a legal evaluation of the events that has created a de facto state of impunity with the Russian politicians and their military and has stimulated the escalation of state terror. Russia has also annexed parts of the territory of the Republic of Georgia and continues to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign neighbouring states with the view to restore its former influence there.
The entire territory of the Northern Caucasus has turned into a theatre of war. Daily news bulletins from the region indeed resemble news from a theatre of operations, if one considers the deaths, injuries and scale of violence.
The region has the highest unemployment rate in Eurasia and the economy is in shatters. The criminal clan system in the Northern Caucasus, established and cultivated by Russia does create a temporary illusion of stability. However, it is the total absence of prospects and opportunity for a good life that provokes young desperate people to search for solutions to this virtually hopeless situation.
Under the guise of fighting terrorism Russia’s leadership has deprived the peoples of the autonomous republics their basic right – the right to free, democratic elections of their national leaders. The national autonomies are gradually losing their identity.
We have been hearing the claims of Russian and European politicians that the unemployed from the Northern Caucasus can find a better life elsewhere in Russia. Yet such attempts for survival are doomed in the long run because the impunity practised by the Russian leaders in the past 10 years has resulted in the emergence of extremely violent racist and nationalistic groups.
Based on this premise I urge the Council of Europe and all parties and countries who bear the brunt of the burden of receiving and housing refugees from the Chechen Republic and other parts of the region to develop an entirely new approach to finding a political settlement and a sustainable good future for the Northern Caucasus.
http://www.chechenpress.co.uk/content/2010/06/22/main01.shtml
