News

Djambul Shaminadze, head of the precinct election commission in the village of Danisparauli, which is in the Khulo election district, was detained by officers of law-enforcement agencies in the morning of April 16 in a hospital ward, to which he had been taken with signs of beating the day before.

At about 19:00 local time April 16, the opposition staged a meeting on the square adjacent to Matenadaran in downtown Yerevan. About 10 thousand people gathered in spite of the cold weather and torrential rain.

When an UAZ car with members of the Russian interior ministry's mobile detachment for Chechnya was moving near the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, an improvised radio controlled bomb went off.

An unidentified bomb went off near the village of Alleroy in Chechnya's Kurchaloy district.

The Prime Minister of Abkhazia and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Georgia met on April 16 in Sukhum to discuss the Georgian-Abkhazian meetings set for April - in Moscow and Geneva.

In its report, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) has summarized the evidence of violations of freedom of assembly, of freedom of movement, of freedom of the media, and of the persecution of political dissenters that have occurred in Armenia.

The human rights organization recommends that the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture examine and establish clear standards and criteria for the use of diplomatic assurances by governments with the purpose of ensuring that governments adhere to their absolute obligation not to expose persons to a risk of torture.

According to data of the Chechen National Rescue Committee, 1,500 people in 300 tents are officially registered on the territory of the Satsita camp, though the real number of people living in this temporary accommodation center exceeds 2,000 people.

16 civilians were killed in the Chechen Republic for seven days, 7 of them were children.

Akhmed Zakayev, special envoy of Aslan Maskhadov and prime minister of the unrecognized Ichkerian government, has made a statement on the April 15 vote at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

On April 15, FSB (Federal Security Service) Colonel Aleksandr Litvinenko, the author of the books "FSB Blows Up Russia" and "LCG ? Lubyanka Criminal Group" who received political asylum in England, joined the appeal "For an Interim United Nations Administration in Chechnya" initiated by the Transnational Radical Party.

Lieutenant-General Vagarshak Arutyunian is charged with making appeals to overthrow the power by force.

The Russian military and officers of local security agencies have been conducting large-scale operations in several southern districts of Chechnya for the last few days.

"All responsibility for the frustration of the elections lies with the Adjarian leadership and those people who create illegal armed units there," said Chairman of the Georgian Central Election Commission Zurab Chiaberashvili.

"A corridor is left even during military operations so that people can leave, but on April 13 the people were encircled on all sides," said Erdzhanik Abgarian, board member of the Armenian National Movement.

The OSCE is deeply concerned over the use of force during the dispersal of the opposition meeting, said Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan Ambassador Vladimir Pryakhin.

"The level of fighting efficiency of the Karabakh army gives hope that the balance of forces in the region, due to which the truce is preserved, will be maintained in the future too," the minister said.

Unidentified gunmen opened automatic fire at the Lada car in which head of the village administration Alvi Valiyev was driving at 9:45 p.m. on April 15.

Residents of Dagestan's Tsumadinsky and Botlikhsky districts held an unauthorized meeting, demanding that immediate measures be taken in connection with a disappearance of their friends.

Human rights organizations, NGOs, and students held a meeting in the center of Yerevan on April 15.