News

In the run-up of the parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, scheduled on November 7, nine international human rights and journalist organizations have promulgated a new joint report entitled: "Freedom of speech in Azerbaijan is under threat - deterioration of media environment".

The first open ecology film festival "Green Carnation" will be held in Sochi on October 22-25. Public will see more than 30 full- and short-length feature films, movies for kids and retro movies.

As a result of a broken elevator rope in one of Baku skyscrapers, 10 persons suffered, including one child.

At night on October 22, in Komsomolskiy settlement of the city of Kizilyurt, Dagestan, an attack was committed on a district militiaman and his relative, said a source from local law enforcement bodies.

On October 26, Makhachkala will host a press conference on the topic "Incessant acts of violence against lawyers". The event is initiated by well-known local human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, said Svetlana Isaeva, chair of the human rights NGO "Mothers of Dagestan for Human Rights".

The Council of Europe (CE) is negative to the fact that Armenia keeps people in prison for political reasons. This was stated by Torbjorn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, at a press conference on October 21 in Yerevan on the outcomes of the CE's Forum "In the Name of Democracy".

Islam Tochiev, leader of the Plievo militant grouping, liquidated in the special operation conducted in the village of Plievo in Ingushetia, had to do with a number of resonant terror acts, local law enforcers assert.

During almost 10 months of 2010, 75 members of the armed underground were assassinated in the territory of Chechnya, including three militant leaders; and more than 160 militants were detained. These data were presented at the meeting of law enforcement officials in Grozny. Observers believe them to be overestimated.

Gyulnara Bammatova, a lawyer with the Bar Association "Kavkaz", which had received a serious injury, according to her story, as a result of actions of the officer from the Republic's Drug Control Agency, was rejected in her attempt to open a criminal case against the attacker. Moreover, she herself was accused of insulting the drug control officer and simulating the attacks.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has reported about preparations for setting up a special commission on the persons deemed to be missing, and on making a proper list of them. Activists of some local NGOs are sceptical as to whether this will help in establishing the fate of kidnapped and missing persons.

On October 21, security agents of the shopping centre in Lilo broke video camera of Georgian TV channels and beat journalists who came to cover the fact of closing a number of commercial objects and the related protest action of traders.

Split into Umarov's and Gakaev's groupings in Chechnya will complicate the work of Russian power agents in crushing the underground, since it broke the earlier clear hierarchy in the camp of the militants waging war on federal agencies, said Russian orientalist Alexei Malashenko. However, according to political scientist Orkhan Jemal, the split in "Imarat Kavkaz" will play into the hands of Russian power agencies in their fight against militants.

On the initiative of the townsmen, units of a volunteer public order squad will be working in the territories of districts, neighbourhoods and blocks of flats in Stavropol, Press service of the municipal administration reports.

On October, 21, Fatima Margieva, human rights activist from South Osetia, appealed to Russian and international human rights organizations asking them to "help settlement of the situation around the National party of RSO and interfere with the fates of the political prisoners".

The attack on the building of the Chechen Parliament in Grozny on October 19 and the militants' attack committed in the end of August this year on Tsentoroi - the family village of the Chechen President - indicate serious changes in tactics and strategy of the Chechen underground, some local experts believe. In their opinion, activation of the underground may lead to a new outbreak of violence in the country.

The forthcoming elections to the National Assembly of Azerbaijan are prepared in the environment characterized by lack of dialogue between the ruling party and the opposition, runs the primary report released today by the Observation Mission of the Office for Democratic Institutes and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on the status of the pre-election situation in Azerbaijan.

Moscow hosts a scientific-practical conference "European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR): Outcomes and Prospects". Among other issues, lawyers, human rights and NGO activists raised the issue of protecting natives of the Caucasus in Moscow and other Russian cities, where they get into the most vulnerable group of population.

Yuri Petrosyan, a resident of the city of Yaroslavl, asks Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to help in fair investigation of the incident, in which he and his son-in-law, a Chechen by nationality, received gunshot wounds.

In the city of Tyrnyauz, where a special operation to search militants is conducted, four local residents were found in one of the mines: they were gathering scrap metal there.

As reported by the head of the investigatory division for the city of Tuapse, Krasnodar Territory, his employees found the body of 16th casualty of the flood.