News

Human rights defenders believe that over the past two years the situation with the freedom of the press in Northern Caucasus, has worsened. This was stated on September 14 at the Independent Press Centre in Moscow at the press conference "Northern Caucasus: Journalists and Rights Defenders in Danger".

The Open Joint-Stock Company (OJSC) "Resorts of Northern Caucasus" and the World Wildlife Fund-Russia (WWF) have signed an agreement on cooperation in the area of nature protection in Northern Caucasus.

The Regional Department of "Rospotrebnadzor" (Russian Federal Agency for Consumer Supervision) has reported that two residents of the village of Semichny, Kotelnikov District of the Volgograd Region, were hospitalized with the diagnosis of anthrax.

As reported today by Oleg Tushmalov, the head of the Moscow Interregional Investigatory Department for Transports of the Investigatory Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF), the dry food kits, which had been given to the children who returned from a summer camp in the Krasnodar Territory and were hospitalized en route, the coliform bacillus was detected.

In the village of Utrish, located near the city of Anapa, 15 armed youngsters opened fire at a hotel with tourists.

At the World Championships in Freestyle, Greco-Roman and Women's Wrestling, held in Turkey, Zamira Rakhmanova, an athlete from Dagestan, has won the gold medal. This is the first Russian gold medal in women's wrestling since 2002.

Members of a non-governmental pressure group "Parents of Volgograd for Children's Rights" appealed to deputies of the municipal and regional Dumas asking for aid in solving the problem of the lack of places in kindergartens of Volgograd. 36 legislators ignored the activists' request.

On September, 14, two schoolchildren aged 12 and 13 in the town of Shakhti, Rostov region, perished after breathing in butane through polyethylene bags.

On September, 14, the parties of the case of "Urvan jama'at" (Kabardino-Balkaria) spoke in a debate in North-Caucasian military circuit. The defendants and their attorneys asked the court to re-qualify a number of clauses in the case and also not to impose life imprisonment.

Vladimir Elichev, Deputy Head of Administration of the city of Stavropol and Director of the Town-Planning Committee, is suspected of abuse of power. As reported by the press service of the Chief Department of the Russian MIA for the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD) operative agents believe that Elichev had broken the order of granting land plots, owned by the municipality, in favour of some particular company.

Acquaintance visit to the Caucasus of Philippe Lefort, the newly appointed EU Special Representative for Southern Caucasus and Crisis in Georgia; youth educational forums in the Rostov and Astrakhan Regions; mass brawls - prevented and not - in the Stavropol Territory; setting up of former militants' adaptation commission in Ingushetia, - look these and other events in the Caucasus in the review of the week of September 5-11, 2011, prepared by the "Caucasian Knot".

The Chechen Prosecutor's Office is investigating the attempt to blow up the car of the religious figure undertaken in the city of Argun. Law enforcement bodies are searching the persons involved in preparing the crime.

Today in the morning, an Azerbaijani drone was shot down in the Askeran direction of the contact line with Azerbaijan over the territory of Karabakh. This was stated by the press service of Defence Army of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan does not confirm this information.

The network of the civil society "Refugees and International Law" has issued an open letter addressed to the Prime Minister of Armenia Tigran Sargsyan on suspicion of embezzlement by responsible officials of the funds allocated to build houses for refugees.

In the course of a sanitary-epidemiological investigation held at the Veshenskaya secondary school of the Rostov Region, the regional "Rospotrebnadzor" (Russian Federal Agency for Consumer Supervision) division has established that the school had broken the sanitary and anti-epidemic regime and rules of children's nutrition.

As believed by the participants of the conference "Situation in the Armenian Army", the establishment of the institute of Military Ombudsperson can improve the situation in the Armed Forces of Armenia.

The absence in the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic (NAR) of civil activism and violations of human rights have been stated by rights defenders and journalists from Baku, who visited the NAR on September 12. They spoke about it on September 13 at the press conference held in the Azerbaijani capital at the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS).

At night of September, 11, local policeman Evgeny Tereshenko committed suicide in the stanitsa of Leningradskaya, Krasnodar region, by shooting in his head from a Government-issue Makarov.

Residents of Khabez district of the Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia state that policemen regularly come to their houses, carry out searches without explanation of the reason and take them to police department where they are interrogated, their fingerprints are taken and the policemen take written statements from those interrogated that they are not Wahhabis.

On September, 2, armed and masked people wearing camouflage uniforms in the capital of Chechnya kidnapped a resident of Gudermes district of the republic and carried him away in an unknown direction, "Memorial" Human Rights Center reports.