News

The administration of Gobustan prison (Azerbaijan) goes on exerting pressure on the participants in the hunger strike, trying to make them stop it, according to the sources linked with the prisoners' relatives who provided information to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Said Nuri, activist of the "Eni Fikir " ("New Thinking") youth organization, who is under a suspended sentence of five yours in prison in Azerbaijan, has called the sentence on his companions-in-arms unfair, noting that the court hearing was conducted with violations of the law.

Today, representatives of a number of Abkhazian NGOs and journalists disseminated a joint declaration in which they note that people in Abkhazia have enthusiastically welcomed the decision to declare 2006 the Year of Abkhazia in South Ossetia and the Year of South Ossetia in Abkhazia.

Information about death of Ali Insanov, former Health Minister, was not confirmed, runs the message of the Public Relations Centre of the Ministry of National Security (MNS) of Azerbaijan.

In his interview to Radio Liberty, a senior official of the Ministry of Justice of Azerbaijan admitted the fact of hunger strike held by the inmates of the Gobustan prison. But the official insisted that only three life convicts are on the action.

Miklosh Kharashti, OSCE mass media representative, expressed his concern in relation to arrest in Azerbaijan of Sakit Zakhidov, a satirical journalist.

June 30, 2006, inhabitants of the refugee settlement Maiskiy of the Prigorodny District of North Ossetia declared themselves getting prepared for a hunger strike action.

Amendments to the law "On Counteracting Extremist Activities," adopted in the first reading by the State Duma, will impede the work of human rights activists and journalists who criticize bureaucrats, Russian human rights activists think.

The hunger strike of the inmates of the Gobustan prison continues.

The Nalchik City Court refused to satisfy a complaint of Rasul Kudayev, who was arrested on accusation of participation in the events of October 13, 2005, a citizen of the settlement of Khasanya and a former prisoner of the American prison in Guantanamo, on refusal of the investigator of the prosecutor's office of Kabardino-Balkaria to initiate a criminal case on the facts of being tortured.

On the eleventh day of the hunger-strike, started in Azerbaijan by life-sentenced inmates of the Gobustan prison, the health condition of some of them - Giorgiy Geladze, Shakir Rzakhanov, Ali Guliev and Bakhtiyar Dzhafarov who sewed up his mouth - got rapidly aggravated.

Public defenders of satirical journalist Sakit Zakhidov (Mirza Sakit), arrested in Azerbaijan, continue to inform the diplomatic corps on the events around the criminal case in relation to the journalist.

Some time ago the parents of the militants who had perished in Kabardino-Balkaria on October 13, 2005, addressed president of Russia V. Putin with a request to exhibit an act of humanism and give out the bodies for burial.

On July 6, 2006, in the settlement of Chernorechye of the Zavodskoj District of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, when conducting targeted special actions, the employees of the district department of internal affairs detained one of local citizens.

The inmates of Colony No. 6 of the city of Rustavi (Georgia) announced a hunger-strike, as their relatives have explained, because of "lack of elementary conditions."

It has become known to the correspondent of the "Caucasian Knot" that the parents of the militants who have been killed in Kabardino-Balkaria militants have sent today an appeal to the summit of the "Great Eight," in which they ask to affect the issue of giving out the bodies of their sons for burial.

The Committee for defence of the rights of satirical journalist Sakit Zakhidov adopted today an appeal to the name of the head of Azerbaijan Ilkham Aliev.

"Recently, the bureaus of medical-social examination of Volgograd have transformed into an efficient instrument of eugenics that is reviving in Russia and is aggressively trying to penetrate the fundamental dogmata of state policy of Russia," Andrey Bachman, an activist of antifascist movement of Volgograd told in his interview to the correspondent of the "Caucasian Knot".

Victoria Webb and Frieda Vike, representatives of the international human rights organization "Amnesty International", have visited Kabardino-Balkaria.

The legislative norms prohibiting the bodies to be handed over to relatives, adopted recently in Russia, run contrary to the European convention on human rights and fundamental freedoms and other international norms on human rights, and to the Constitution of Russia, said Alexander Grebelskiy.