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IV. Current Developments in Ingushetia: Continued Abuses and Renewed Pressure to Return

The majority of cases documented by Human Rights Watch researchers took place in June 2003. Recent reports indicate that the situation has not improved in the subsequent two months. The media, human rights groups, and local sources have continued to report on security incidents and raids targeting internally displaced people. Following are three illustrative examples.

On July 4, 2003, three armed men in the center of Nazran abducted Ali Astamirov, a thirty-four-year-old Chechen who has been an Agence France Press (AFP) journalist in Ingushetia and Chechnya for more than a year. According to media reports, prior to the abduction, he had recently received anonymous threatening phone calls. The official investigation, opened several days after the abduction, did not produce any result. Neither AFP nor the journalist’s family has received ransom demands.¹²⁶ Despite the AFP’s numerous appeals to the authorities, as of late August, Ali Astamirov remained missing.¹²⁷

On August 21, 2003, about twenty-five masked and armed men abducted five Chechens from a hospital in the village of Sleptsovskaia. According to information obtained by Human Rights Watch from an official source, the armed men were FSB agents and military personnel from Khankala, and the operation was aimed at detaining Anzor Suleimanov, a suspected member of an armed Chechen group. The servicemen found Suleimanov in a hospital ward and started severely beating him and another man, Ali Shaipov, who was apparently accompanying Suleimanov. Terrified by the raid, a medical resident and a patient whom he was treating at the moment tried to leave the hospital. The servicemen rushed after them, shooting, caught both in the hospital yard, and started beating the men. The servicemen took away the suspected fighter and his companion, the patient they caught in the hospital yard, and two other men who tried to stop the beating in the yard. As of this writing, none of the men had been released. Sunzhenskii district procuracy opened a criminal investigation into the abduction.¹²⁸

On August 27, 2003, Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs troops opened gunfire in the village of Chemulga. According to the acting minister of internal affairs of Ingushetia, the servicemen were drunk, and their shooting damaged a mosque and a private house in the village.¹²⁹

Against the backdrop of a deteriorating security situation in both Ingushetia and Chechnya, Russian authorities have stepped up pressure on internally displaced people in July and August, 2003. Officials have publicly announced October 1, 2003, as a new deadline for dismantling the tent camps and the return of displaced persons.¹³⁰ As before, Russian officials claim that all returns to Chechnya will be voluntary, and that they may provide some alternative housing in Ingushetia to tent dwellers unwilling to return.

At the same time, Chechen Prime Minister Anantolii Popov asserted that only 5 percent of the internally displaced do not want to go back.¹³¹ While it may be true that the vast majority eventually want to return to Chechnya, they clearly do not wish to do so under current circumstances. A survey conducted by Médecins Sans Frontières in February 2003 showed that more than 90 percent of the internally displaced living in tent camps did not want to return to Chechnya, fearing for their lives.[132]

In mid-August, residents of one of the five big tent camps, Bella, complained that the authorities had threatened them with imminent closure of the camp and were forcing them to leave. Some 200 people from the camp were reportedly relocated to a temporary accommodation center at a former pesticides storehouse. After several people started feeling sick, migration authorities rushed to return them back to the camp, where their tents had already been removed.¹³³

Meanwhile, Chechnya does not seem prepared to accommodate even those who voluntarily choose to return. According to media reports, several dozen refugees who went back to Grozny in August had to spend a night or two on the streets, because the promised accommodations were not ready.¹³⁴

As of this writing, efforts to press displaced persons to return have been more successful than ever, with a reported 3,000 people having returned to Chechnya in late July and early August 2003.¹³⁵

The voluntary nature of these returns remains highly questionable. Neither the displaced themselves nor international organizations monitoring the situation seem to believe that the tent dwellers are free to make their choices.

Almost 800 displaced persons from the Bella camp sent a letter to Ingush President Murat Ziazikov and to the Russian presidential commission for human rights complaining about strong pressure from Russian authorities to leave their camp.¹³⁶

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees challenged the voluntary nature of returns, specifically objecting to the shuttling of about 200 internally displaced from the Bella camp, and expressing concern about the lack of a viable program of alternative housing in Ingushetia.¹³⁷ Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières have also raised concerns that the displaced persons are being returned to Chechnya against their will and without any reliable security guarantees.¹³⁸