News

A self-made explosive device went off not far from the village of Nagornoye, Chechnya's Grozny district, on June 14, according to the interior ministry. All the suffered men were taken to hospital.

The appearance of skinheads in the courtroom, abuse and threats during a trial against people who used violence against journalists are evidence that the criminals are non-punishable and the authorities do not show will to protect freedom of speech, reads a statement by the Association of Investigative Journalists.

On June 14, the media reported with reference to chief of the Georgian financial police David Kvezerashvili that "the Georgian financial police have detained three customs officers of the breakaway republic of South Osetia near the village of Megvrekisi.

Gumar Tkhamokov, a 47-year-old resident of the Psychokh village, who is a disabled man of the second group, came to the office of the village administration head in the evening of June 1 to ask why water supply had been cut off such a long time. In two hours, he was taken from there with a skull injury and a rib fracture.

Approximately 25 thousand refugees, most of whom were deported from Azerbaijan, live in Nagorny Karabakh now, according to Nagorno Karabakh's Department for Refugees and IDPs.

Participants asserted in particular that local Azerbaijan authorities closed Georgian schools in the region stage-by-stage, forced Georgians living in the region to change their family names and give children Azerbaijan names, and subjected them to other forms of national discrimination.

Sources in the conflict zone reported that a skirmish between members of an Abkhazian armed unit and Russian peacekeepers left a member of the Abkhazian group, a certain Dzidzaria, badly wounded and the Russian peacekeeper whose family name is Stupnik wounded.

A spokesman for the South Osetian government announced that "the holding of the talks with Tbilisi is unreal after the situation in the zone of the Georgian-Osetia conflict had become extremely tense."

Three were killed in a "clean-up" in Orjonikidzevskaia. Sunzha district, Ingushetia, on June 12, so investigators say a following blast near that place might be rebels' revenge for their associates.

Explosions on roads marked Russia's Day in Grozny on June 12.

Some Chechen public leaders would like to meet with Malik Saidullaev, a candidate for president of the republic who also ran in 2003, to discuss ways to make the upcoming election "clean and honest."

Bislan Gantamirov, former deputy prime minister of Chechnya, is going to lodge papers to the local electoral commission to run for president of the Chechen Republic.

The Chechen-Ingush community of Samara held a protest meeting on June 10 demanding that abuses on an ethnic basis should be stopped and seeking protection from the Russian president.

Below is a full-text version of a statement addressed to leaders of a number of Georgian NGOs by the Abkhaz Women Association alarmed with some developments in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Vagarshak Arutyunian, the member of the political council of the opposition party Anrapetutiun (Republic) and former Armenian defense minister, was released from custody after giving a written undertaking not to leave a place.

3,293 incidents when people fell victims to mine and UXO explosions, including 2,553 cases of injuries, have been registered in Chechnya since 1995, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Russian Federation.

Miriam Yevikova, a Slovak citizen who worked for the Organization for Aid to Refugees (OPU), disappeared on the way from Pyatigorsk to Vladikavkaz on June 1, reported Dmitry Grushkin, a representative of the Memorial Human Rights Center.

"The active PR-campaign to promote Alkhanov that has been launched both in the Chechen and Russian media indicates that the Kremlin has made its choice," said a 37-year-old teacher at the Chechen State University.

The 31-year-old field commander killed yesterday, Nashkho Khamzatkhanov, was wanted for membership in illegal armed units for several years.

44 Ural military trucks passed through the Kavkaz post on the Rostov-Baku federal route on June 10. They moved from the direction of the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, Ingushetia's Sunzha district, to Chechnya.