What is going on with russia and chechnya?

I think I spelled it right. Anyway, what the hell is going on? I can only find scattered details, but I read that chechnya was mostly muslim. Is this another Israel/palestine sort of situation? Whatever the hell is going on, I think it's horrible that they're using children as hostages in that school.

Can anyone here give a little more information about WTF is going on?

 

Well here is what CNN had to say

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/01/russia.school/index.html

 

As far as I can understand these things, its all the same mindset. Holding school kids hostage, suicide bus bombings in Israel, slamming passenger jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the third jet into a field in Pennsylvania.

 

I mean what's going on with the entire situation, not just this particular incident.

 

I think Russia wants to gain more control in the region (her backyard) where the US is also trying to gain dominance; just in case another trans caucasion petrol and gas pipeline is built.

 

Ole Goat's response shows the ignorance that is common among americans concerning the conflict in Chechnya.


Russia has a long history of genocidal attacks on Chechnya - the majority of human rights groups around the world have been calling on Russia for years to stop its brutality in that nation - which includes "disappearances," forcibly displacing people from their homes, torture, and massacres.

Since 1994, more than 30,000 people have been massacred in Chechnya, and 600,000 displaced: http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/chechnya/chechnya.php

From Human Rights Watch:

The armed conflict in Chechnya, now in its fourth year, is the most serious human rights crisis of the new decade in Europe. It has taken a disastrous toll on the civilian population and is now one of the greatest threats to stability and rule of law in Russia. Yet the international community’s response to it has been shameful and shortsighted.

The international community has a moral and political obligation to protect fundamental rights of people in and around Chechnya. It should with a unified voice be prevailing on the Russian government to halt forced disappearances, torture, and arbitrary detention, which Russian forces perpetrate on a daily basis. It should be compiling documentation about abuses into an authoritative, official record. It should be vigorously pressing for a credible accountability process for perpetrators of serious violations of international humanitarian law, and should think strategically about how to achieve this when the Russian court system fails to deliver justice. And it should stop Russia from forcing the return of displaced people to areas where their safety and well-being cannot be ensured.

But none of this has happened. The international community has instead chosen the path of self-deception, choosing to believe Russia’s claims that the situation in Chechnya is stabilizing, and so be spared of making tough decisions about what actions are necessary to stop flagrant abuses and secure the well-being of the people of the region.

The year 2003 saw no improvement in the international community’s disappointing response to the Chechen situation. All the international community could muster were well-intended statements of concern that were never reinforced with political, diplomatic, financial or other consequences.

Chechnya was placed on the agenda of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, the highest human rights body within the U.N. system, but even there a resolution on Chechnya failed to pass. No government leader was willing to press for specific improvements during summits with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. In late 2002 the Russian government closed the field office in Chechnya of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). And to date the Russian government had still not invited U.N. special rapporteurs on torture and extrajudicial executions to visit the region. And unlike in other armed conflicts in Europe, few foreign missions in Russia sought to gather first-hand information about continuing human rights abuses.



To be sure, there are important political obstacles to affecting Russia’s behavior in Chechnya. Because it is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Russia was able to shield Chechnya from serious U.N. scrutiny, save for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 2000 and 2001. The U.S. and European governments have broad political and economic agendas with Russia, ranging from strategic missile defense to energy security to Russian policy in the Middle East. But none of these factors can justify or fully explain the international community’s reluctance to promote human rights protections in and around Chechnya, or why Russia never has had to face significant consequences for abuses by its troops.

International disengagement on Chechnya became more marked after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Russia, which had since 1999 called the conflict in Chechnya a “counter-terror operation,” soon began to argue that the war in Chechnya was its contribution to the U.S.-led global campaign against terrorism. Russia succeeded in further shielding the conflict from scrutiny in international forums and in Russia itself.

Western governments have emphasized the need for Russia to find a political solution to the conflict. But they fail to see the role that continuing abuses play in prolonging it. For this reason, the policy of disengagement is shortsighted. As abuses continue, and as there continues to be no credible accountability process, Chechens appear to be losing what faith or hope they may have had in the Russian government. Disengagement, particularly now, is untimely. Russia has spared little effort to present the situation as stabilizing. But it has proven incapable of ending the conflict; instead, in 2003 it began to spill into neighboring Ingushetia, with Russian forces perpetrating the same abuses there as they have in Chechnya.

In the long term, disengagement on Chechnya is a disservice to human rights in Russia. Having faced no diplomatic or other consequences for its crimes in Chechnya, the Russian government has certainly learned an important lesson about the limits of the international community’s political will in pursuing human rights.

Unchecked patterns of abuse by Russia’s forces in Chechnya will eventually affect the rest of Russian society. Tens of thousands of police and security forces have done tours of duty in Chechnya, after which they return to their home regions, bringing with them learned patterns of brutality and impunity. Several Russian human rights groups have begun to note a “Chechen syndrome” among police who served in Chechnya—a particular pattern of physical abuse and other dehumanizing treatment of people in custody. Russians already face serious risk of torture in police custody. The Chechnya experience is thus undermining efforts to promote the rule of law in Russia’s criminal justice system.

Human Rights Abuses in the Chechnya Conflict

Russia’s second armed conflict in Chechnya in the 1990s began in September 1999. Russia claimed it was a counter-terror operation, aimed at eliminating the chaos that had reined in Chechnya since the end of the 1994-1996 Chechen war and at liquidating terrorist groups that had found haven there. Five months of indiscriminate bombing and shelling in 1999 and early 2000 resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. Three massacres, which followed combat operations, took the lives of at least 130 people. By March 2000, Russia’s federal forces gained at least nominal control over most of Chechnya. They began a pattern of classic “dirty war” tactics and human rights abuses that continue to mark the conflict to this day. Russian forces arbitrarily detain those allegedly suspected of being, or collaborating with, rebel fighters and torture them in custody to secure confessions or testimony. In some cases, the corpses of those last seen in Russian custody were subsequently found, bearing marks of torture and summary execution, in dumping grounds or unmarked graves. More often, those last seen in custody are simply never seen again—they have been forcibly disappeared. Make no mistake, Chechen rebel forces too have committed grave crimes, including numerous brutal attacks targeting civilians in and outside of Chechnya, killing and injuring many. Rebel fighters were also responsible for assassinations of civil servants cooperating with the pro-Moscow Chechen administration of Chechnya. Anti-personnel land mines laid by fighters and Russian forces claimed the lives of federal soldiers and civilians alike.

At the height of the Chechen war in 2000, as many as 300,000 people had been displaced from their homes, with most living in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia. Of these, 40,000 resided in tent camps.

By 2003, the cycle of arbitrary detention, torture, and forced disappearance was well entrenched, and the crisis of forced disappearances appeared to have become a permanent one. According to unpublished governmental statistics, 126 people were abducted and presumed “disappeared” in January and February 2003 alone. In mid-August, the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs said that nearly 400 people had “disappeared” in Chechnya since the beginning of the year. Local officials in 2003 have also admitted the existence of forty-nine mass graves containing the remains of nearly 3,000 civilians.

 

edited for silly and inflamitory comments towards "anarchists" and "neocommunists." he he

 

Cechnya was an uninhabitated wasteland until stalin started relocating people, and a large and very poor muslim community was formed there. after the soviet union broke up Checnhya tried to get independence, but russia still claims it (god only knows why). Since then there has been a long simmering war, Chechnya has developed a democratically elected government and has an army, extremists sometimes resort to terrorism and take a school hostage, but then again terrorism with a tank is as bad as terrorism with a bomb.

 

Sorry I didn't reply until now. I was looking into some of the history of the region. From the little I did read, confirms what has been written in LaughinWillow's post.


Today, according to the Russian news agency, the siege is over. About 150 where killed. At this time, a break down of the dead has not been issued, but the toll is certain to raise.

The point of my first post is that there are many roads to savagery. The road taken in Chechnya may be different than the one in the Middle East or Hitler's Germany. Once the transformation of an individual from a caring human to humanity's worst has been completed, the mindset becomes identical. Nazi's Death Head SS Guards herding women and children into the gas chambers and what occured over night at that school in Beslan Russia are essentally the same act. Somehow a jump in logic was made that it was fit and proper to slaughter the least likely to defend themselves.

One excuse repeatidly offered has been the terrorist has little in the way of weapons or strategy to be effectively be heard or taken seriously. One does not have to wonder the nature of leadership the terrorist can only give should they accually achieve their goal and obtain power. Pol Pot in Cambodia removed any doubt the kind of government terrorist can offer because the only thing they are good at is terror.

 

Something which established governments are also well versed in offering, Goat. Terror is terror whether its being perpetrated by suicide bombers or by established armies kicking in defenseless people's doors and dragging them off to be "interrogated" in captured prison facilities or in third countries outside the scope of international law.

Those on the receiving end suffer all the same.

 

What seems to make this conflict especially bad is that Russia will just go into these hostage situations and just kill everyone and all these civilians and children die then all blame falls on the "terrorists" This latest action is much like the one where the Chechens took the theatre over and the Russians gassed the place with the experimental chemical.

Bad deal.

 

sprout: What seems to make this conflict especially bad is that Russia will just go into these hostage situations and just kill everyone and all these civilians and children die then all blame falls on the "terrorists" This latest action is much like the one where the Chechens took the theatre over and the Russians gassed the place with the experimental chemical.

Bad deal.

If history is any indication, you're probably right.

 

AMEN! Those who perpertrate ANY terror, especially on the most defensless members of society are to be wholely condemned. These actions will not get the Chechen rebels whatever it is they want.

I am not a big fan of how Russia handles these attacks, but the essence of it is the "REBELS" chose to harm others. The Russians reacted. Maybe not in the best way, but no one would have been killed if the "rebels" hadn't decided to wire an entire school with explosives and take several hundred children as hostages. In the end, the RESULT is still the TERRORIST'S fault.

 

Now mind you I'm not saying that these actions are OK in ANY way I'm just saying that Russia doesn't care any more than the chechens in this case. The Russians are more concerned with the fact that the Chechens are there and not that they are taking hostages. To the Russians the hostages are just more bodies to deal with after the chechens are dead. It also seems like Russia is bringing this on their oiwn people buy not finding alternate methods of dealing with this crisis.

 

Bona fide ignorance in all its glory. Grand display of talking out of one's ass. Revolting.

 

EVERYONE is at fault here. Fuck the government, fuck assumptions. The point here is that over 300 children died and over 700 are wounded. Show some compassion for pity's sake instead of acting all self righteous.

How the School Siege Happened

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/04/russian_s/html/1.stm

 

Obviously my point was not taken in the right context.

I'm sorry but it seems to be the case. Are you saying that the Russian soilders acctually give a shit about human lives? They go and rape Chechen women buy the hundereds, kill men, women, and children, burn houses, ect.

I feel nothing but compassion for those poor children and for all innocents caught up in such horrible tragidies but all I'm saying is that the Russians are JUST AS BAD as the Chechens. They have more firepower so instead of taking school kids hostage they just kill them in their homes. I'm not taking the side of the Chechens here! I'm just saying that nobody notices when the Russians do it, only when "terrorists" do it because thats the phrase of the day. Thats what Shrubbery needs to get re-elected so thats all they're gonna talk about. Its an endless cycle of pain and death and both sides are to blame.

It has absolutely nothing to do with self-righteousness. I'm angry about it too but I'm not losing my temper and insulting folk about it. Whether or not we agree on how or why its happening, we both agree that the pain and suffering of children and other innocents is sickening. Please consider that before you insult me again.



self righteous? WTF? what the hell is self righteous about what I said. All I'm saying is there is more going on here than most people seem to see and I think people should be aware of all the factors.

I forgive you


....BUT ONE THING IS FOR CERTAIN: THIS WHOLE THING IS SICKENING.

 

What was so self righteous about that? Your general attitude of knowing everything and being absolutely right.

I make no excuses for my reaction. My personal emotional involvment has a greater control over me.

I am Russian and I mourn the tragedy, the hopelessness, the corruption, the hypocrisy, the fear that my family, friends, relatives have to live in.

It's suffocating to read people talk about who's to blame, why this occured, how something happened, because these speculations and assumptions are easy. Nobody ever talks about what could possibly be done, nobody ever talks about how the situation can be improved. Our human forte is to point our fingers for those to blame and...MOVE ON. And that's what saddens me.

Violence beggets violence. There is nothing more to say. The war's been ongoing for 10 years. They kills us, we kill them. This is war.

If you really need someone to blame, blame the Russian government, blame the moguls who rob, blame the international hypocrits, blame the generals, blame the degeneration of values. All this would still not change the fact that innocent people who just wanted to live a normal life are died, dying and will be dying for absolutely no reason.

 

sorry if I come across like that but it is not the way I feel. I will not explain this again.

this is obvious and even understood

if you read what I wrote then you might have seen that I made this very same comment in not so many words

I will back off now. This is why I try to stay out of these kinds of threads. people almost always take you the wrong way and put words into your mouth and your points get taken and twisted.

Fire away m'lady

My condolences to those who lost their lives.

 

Get over yourself. Nobody's lacking in compassion here, but you sure seem to be missing a few marbles. Nobody said "oops, children died...too bad...", only that there is more than one party (or country) to blame. The russian government (not the general population, ms. jumps-to-conclusions) seems to be exploiting this horrible tragedy in much the same way the US government exploited 9/11. Neither government seems to be above using these horrible events as an excuse to go blow up more innocent people by claiming they harbor terrorists. And then people just let it happen, because jackasses like you like to start screaming about their lack of compassion.

This was a disgusting horrible thing, and even more reason for the rest of the world to demand an end to all violence, instead of revenge. As long as people like you keep insulting and spewing venom at the people who actually WANT all this shit to stop, our governments are going to continue to do it, and these "terrorists" will continue to retaliate.