News

Nearly 8,000 retirees in Chechnya are unable to receive retirement benefits for which they are eligible, announced Bogdan Istamulov, deputy director of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation for Chechnya.

The collection of signatures for the United Nations interim administration in Chechnya took place on Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow on February 21 and 22. The action was arranged by members of the Transnational Radical Party.

Summarizing the visit of Terry Davis, rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, to Stepanakert, Foreign Minister of the Republic of Nagorny Karabakh Ashot Gulyan noted in his interview with the Caucasian Knot correspondent that the rapporteur was especially interested in the problems of refugees in the context of the Karabakh settlement.

On February 23, about 4 thousand people held an authorized meeting in Dagestan. The main demand of its participants was that Akkinsky Chechens (Chechens who have originally been living in Dagestan) should be given their lands back and the Aukhovsky district of Dagestan should be restored.

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).