News

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.

Chechen non-governmental organizations engaged in IDPs' problems report on approximately 1,000 people still living in canvas tents on the territory of different places of compact residence.

Residents from different districts of the republic started arriving at Tsentoroy, the ancestral village of the Kadyrov family, in the morning of June 10.

Over 20 representatives of Chechen human rights organizations and pubic movements attended the conference.

Vagarshak Arutyunian was arrested on the night of April 12-13, when interior troops used force to disperse a demonstration on Bagramian Avenue in Yerevan.

The leader of the Public Court human rights group, Valery Krasnobrizhev, was arrested in the prosecutor's office of Krasnodar's Central District on June 5.

Approximately 100 protesters gathered on the square in front of the building of the regional administration.

Chechen law enforcement agencies claim the detainees, a 28-year-old and a 22-year-old men, have already made a confession. But the interior ministry has flatly refused to impart names of the alleged murderers of Akhmat Kadyrov.

As reported by inhabitants of the temporary accommodation center Rassvet, migration service officials told them the camp would be closed beginning from June 10.

President of the breakaway republic of South Osetia Eduard Kokoity has arrived in Moscow to deliver an official address about South Osetia's joining the Russian Federation to the Russian president and the Federal Assembly.

The overwhelming majority of Chechen refugees who have settled in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge are reluctant to return to Chechnya because they fear for their safety.

Many people in the republic hold Ramzan Kadyrov openly declared that families and relatives of the Chechens fighting in the mountains would be destroyed.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has presented its Annual Democracy Award to the leaders of Russia's most outstanding non-governmental groups that are working to advance and preserve democracy in Russia.

Garri Ayba underwent an operation in the Sukhum town hospital, but he died several hours later.