News

The government must declare amnesty for people arrested in connection with the events of October 2003, stated poet Ramiz Rovshan, who is chair of the Committee to Struggle Against Repressions and Election Fraud.

The Azerbaijan authorities impeded the arrival of the Armenian military in Baku last week.

It is a joint project sponsored by the Handicap International organization and the Chechen Labor Ministry.

Olivier Dupuis, Member of the European Parliament, Radical, asks the Commission: "What does the Commission think of the use of the term "Chechen network" by magistrates from EU member countries - and in particular by the French magistrate Bruguiere - to define a criminal affair in which the only involvement of Chechens seems to be the fact that the EU citizens - and not Chechens - under accusation have referred to Chechens as the possible beneficiaries of financial aid, or Chechnya as a place where they could carry out their plan for a holy war?"

Over 300 people participated in a meeting in the village of Gonio, not far from Batumi. They demanded that Adjarian leader Aslan Abashidze resign and accused him of establishing a totalitarian regime on the territory of the autonomy.

The main issue on the agenda is a criminogenic situation in the Gali district of Abkhazia, which has worsened recently.

On January 17, two locals were killed in the village of Katayama, which is in the Staropromislovsky district of Grozny.

A delegation from Chechnya, headed by acting chairman of the Chechen Government Eli Isayev, visited the tent camps of Chechen refugees "Satsita" and "Sputnik" on January 17.

The Achkhoy-Martan district was massively stricken by the federal attack aviation on the night of January 13-14.

"It is not by accident that the world powers persistently present the conflict as the one between Armenia and Azerbaijan and not between Karabakh and Azerbaijan," says the Karabakh politician.

"The Turks-Meskhetians are tired of explaining that they require no compensation, no restitution of the villages and territories taken from them before, they are not inclined to declare autonomy in Samtskhe-Javakheti, they just want to come back and start normal life at home," said Chingiz Neyman-Zade, deputy chair of the Association of Akhaltsikhe (Meskhetian) Turks "Vatan" (Motherland) in Azerbaijan.

Many thousands of people who were executed or sent to camps as well as millions of people who were dispossessed, deported and disfranchised have not been rehabilitated so far.

Russian servicemen rushed into houses, robbed and beat locals all night.

Erkan Mumcu emphasized that the showing of Ararat in Turkey was not prohibited after all. The matter concerns only the refusal of Belge Company to show the film in Turkey.

"Due to the fact that the international community has not recognized our state for already 10 post-war years and Russia, along with other CIS countries, has introduced sanctions against Abkhazia, people in the republic have no fundamental rights secured by the Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to leave Abkhazia and to return to it," thinks Lawyer Tsiza Gumba, a former deputy of the Abkhazian Parliament.

On January 15, the senior investigator of the Trusovsky District Prosecutor's Office of Astrakhan, Rashid Zhumgaliyev, brought a charge against Damir Batyrshin, former director general of Publishing House Media Prestizh Company, and Vladimir Nikonov, his deputy. The mentioned company published and distributed the Moskovsky Komsomolets in Astrakhan newspaper.

Chechen refugees living in the Bart tent camp in Karabulak, Ingushetia, were offered to leave the camp territory within 10 days.

President of Ingushetia Murat Zyazikov is going to Geneva to discuss issues concerning the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Ingushetia to Chechnya.

In particular, the second meeting of working groups on security issues and a policy within the Geneva Process is designed for late February. This meeting was to be held in Tbilisi as early as the autumn of 2003, but it did not take place. The first meeting was held in Sukhum in the summer of 2003.

The open letter to Doctor Leonid Roshal reads, "The statement "of an eye-witness" you made yesterday that the terrorists [in the Theatre Center] on Dubrovka provoked a storm of the theatre and the use of homicidal gas is comparable in its shamelessness with President Putin's statement that "the gas was innocuous"."