The Assembly notes with regret that the specific recommendations
addressed to the competent Russian authorities in
,
which was adopted unanimously with the full support of the Russian delegation,
have remained largely unimplemented. In particular:
3.1 non-violent, dialogue-based
methods of conflict resolution such as the work of the rehabilitation and
adaptation commissions have been largely abandoned or never seriously
attempted (as in the Chechen Republic); by contrast, the Ingushetian
authorities and the municipal rehabilitation commissions in Derbent
and Khasavyurt deserve praise for continuing their attempts at rehabilitating militants
who wish to return to civilian life. Instead of seeking dialogue
with Muslim groups, including those constructively pursuing reconciliation,
the authorities in the Chechen Republic and Dagestan have harassed
and intimidated presumed Salafis;
3.2 co-operation with civil society and with lawyers remains
tense and constrained. In the Chechen Republic, but also in Dagestan,
human rights groups, such as the Assembly’s 2011 Human Rights Prize laureate
Nizhniy Novgorod Committee against Torture with its Joint Mobile
Group of Human Rights Defenders in Chechnya (JMG), the Human Rights
Centre “Memorial” and MASHR, and their leaders and staff members,
have been subjected to mob violence, arson, physical attacks and
intimidation. It is regrettable that the JMG had to withdraw its
teams from the Chechen Republic in early 2016 for security reasons.
Lawyers defending victims of human rights violations have themselves
become targets of aggression, intimidation and trumped-up criminal
charges in reprisal for their work;
3.3 threats by high-ranking local officials and political
leaders, arbitrary detentions, the recent sentencing of a Caucasian Knot journalist to three
years in prison on allegedly fabricated drug possession charges
and the violent attack against a group of visiting journalists all
serve to discourage journalists from exercising their profession
in the Chechen Republic;
3.4 members of the security forces and law-enforcement bodies
still resort to illegal means such as abductions and secret detentions,
extrajudicial killings, torture, collective punishment targeting
family members of alleged insurgents and public humiliation, and
they continue to enjoy almost complete impunity. Almost all the
crimes against the persons to whom the Assembly paid tribute in
Resolution 1738 (2010) are
still unpunished. Recent reports of large-scale abductions, secret
detentions, torture and even extrajudicial killings of lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons in Chechnya
are moreover a new and particularly grave concern;
3.5 the State-orchestrated mass persecution of a target group
based on sexual orientation presents a grave concern of mass atrocities
taking place within a Council of Europe member State, and compels the
Council of Europe to take urgent steps and to adopt a resolution
ordering a special investigation into the matter;
3.6 the implementation of the 247 judgments of the European
Court of Human Rights (“the Court”) in the Khashiyev and Akayeva
group of cases, involving the most serious human rights violations
by members of the security forces and the failure of the competent
authorities to investigate such cases, remains highly unsatisfactory,
despite the application by the Committee of Ministers of the enhanced supervision
procedure and the adoption of interim resolutions. In particular:
3.6.1 the “special investigative units” created especially to
examine those cases in which the Court found failures to investigate
have produced few results;
3.6.2 a “single and high-level body” mandated to search for
missing persons and ensure the allocation of the necessary resources
required for large-scale forensic and scientific work within a centralised
and independent mechanism, as recommended by the Court itself, the
International Committee of the Red Cross, the Parliamentary Assembly
and the Committee of Ministers, has still not yet been set up, nor
has the Chechen Republic been equipped with a forensic laboratory capable
of carrying out bodily exhumations and professional DNA testing;
3.6.3 the inadequacy of the current set-up became painfully
obvious at the end of December 2016 when 109 bodies from a mass
grave were brought to Chechnya and only two families of missing
persons were able to identify their relatives’ remains before the
rest were rapidly buried again;
3.6.4 the authorities are increasingly relying on statute of
limitations and amnesty laws to guarantee impunity to even the small
number of perpetrators of human rights violations who have been
identified, despite the Assembly’s and the Committee of Ministers’
exhortations to the contrary;
3.6.5 according to the action plan submitted by the Russian
Government to the Committee of Ministers, investigations into almost
all cases in the Khashiyev and Akayeva group have now been suspended;
3.7 in the Chechen Republic, the authorities continue to nurture
a climate of pervading fear in an atmosphere of personalisation
of power. The head of the republic has made public threats against political
opponents, human rights activists and their families, even in other
parts of the Russian Federation and beyond. In particular, in the
run-up to the September 2016 local elections in the Chechen Republic,
local authorities comprehensively repressed even the mildest criticism,
including dissenting opinions expressed by ordinary citizens, and
viciously attacked critical Russian and foreign journalists and
human rights defenders. Chechen law-enforcement and security agencies,
acting directly or through apparent proxies, have increasingly resorted
to unlawful detention and enforced disappearances, cruel and degrading
treatment, death threats, and retaliation against family members
of local critics. Moreover, the denial, trivialisation and condoning
by the Chechen authorities of the recent attacks against LGBTI persons
in Chechnya would appear to be in blatant conflict with the positive
obligation to investigate allegations of such attacks effectively
under Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights
(ETS No. 5);
3.8 the deterioration of the situation of women and girls
in the Chechen Republic has continued. The head of the Chechen Republic
actively promotes the application of rules based on Chechen customary laws, adats, and interpretations of Sharia
that discriminate against women and girls in family law matters, in
violation of Russian law. Domestic violence and purportedly “traditional”
practices harmful to women and girls, such as forced, early and
arranged marriages, and even so-called “honour crimes”, are widespread
and tolerated by the regional authorities.
3.9 the general brutalisation of society and social practices
harms not only women and girls, but also LGBTI people or those perceived
to be LGBTI, as illustrated through recent reports in the media.
