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Representatives of the republican interior ministry recommended refuges in categorical terms not to hold the action in the open air. The functionaries said such an action would be broken up by police.

The purpose of the demonstration was to express a protest against actions of the Russian army in Chechnya, against abductions and extrajudicial punishments of civilians there, and against the discrimination of Chechens by their ethnic belonging all over Russia.

The purpose of his visit is to prepare a report on the Karabakh conflict by the PACE fall session.

"If we see that they are readying for war, we will take corresponding measures. The Armenian army is ready for war. If a war begins, it will be a brutal one," said Chief of the Armenian Armed Forces' General Staff Mikhail Arutyunian.

The Center for Peacekeeping and Human Rights Actions jointly with the All-Tatar Public Center arranged a demonstration of films from the program of the international Chechnya Film Festival.

Liberal human rights defenders, former political prisoners, about twenty anarchists and Workers' Democracy members participated in the action.

PACE rapporteur on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict Terry Davis met with the leaders of Nagorny Karabakh on February 23.

In Ryazan on February 23, the 60th anniversary of the deportation of the Chechen people, the Sasovo human rights center Choice of Conscience and the Human Rights School attached to Ryazan's Memorial Society arranged a demonstration of films from the program of the international Chechnya Film Festival.

On February 23, after anarchists, antimilitarists and activists of the Ataka (Attack) movement had held an unauthorized picket against the war in Chechnya, some 30 people of the local branch of the Fascist organization Party of Freedom attacked them.

According to Rebecca Santana, Ruslan Sopakhanov, a resident of the Chechen Republic, worked with her for four days as a driver helping her collect information.

On February 23, the anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Chechens and Ingushetians to Central Asia and West Siberia in 1944, a rally was held at Namesti Miru Square in Prague.

The prosecutor has not yet specified details of the investigation, except saying that members of special forces who presented in the Omega Group office at the time of the incident have already been interrogated.

Russians - mostly Chechens - were easily the top asylum-seeking nationality in 2003, with a total of 33,400 (data from 29 rather than the full 36 industrialized countries), announced the UN refugee agency.

Today, February 25, a press conference of Olivier Dupuis, the Radical Member of the European Parliament, is to be held at the conference hall of the European Parliament.

Congress participants appealed to the Georgian leadership and international organizations to provide the return of Meskhetian Turks to their native lands in Meskhetia, Georgia.

"There is no legal basis for either prohibiting this peaceful meeting or for breaking it up," stated Dr. Rhodes, Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation (IHF).

High-level official statements promising and praising the harshest methods to fight corruption may encourage violations of human rights, Human Rights Watch said.

"Out of thirteen independent broadcasters currently working in Azerbaijan, nine operate in the regions," said Whit Mason, Internews' Country Director in Azerbaijan.

The Executive Committee of the Extraordinary Congress of the People of Kalmykia, founded in January 2003 to remove Kirsan Ilyumzhinov from the Kalmyk presidency, intends to arrange a march to Moscow at the end of February.

The Krasnodar Regional Court has denied the appeal by the Novorossiysk Fund "School of Peace" against the decision of a district court on the liquidation of the Fund.