10/03/2016 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Two rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) have strongly condemned the recent violent attacks which took place in Ingushetia against human rights activists from the Joint Mobile Group of the “Committee for the Prevention of Torture”, as well as Russian, Norwegian and Swedish journalists.
“We are very sad to say that it is not the first time such attacks have taken place against anti-torture activists in the North Caucasus region,” said Michael McNamara (Ireland, SOC), rapporteur on the human rights situation in the North Caucasus, and Mailis Reps (Estonia, ALDE), rapporteur on human rights defenders in Council of Europe member States.
“We call on the authorities to effectively investigate this incident, punish its perpetrators, provide medical care to the injured and do their utmost to prevent further similar attacks against human rights activists in the region, in line with recent Assembly Resolution 2095 (2016).”
On 9 March 2016 a mini-bus carrying members of the anti-torture NGO and Russian and foreign journalists from Ingushetia to Chechnya was assaulted by some 20 masked men. The assailants beat them up with sticks, confiscated their mobile phones and set the car on fire. Due to the attack, four people, including one Swedish and one Norwegian journalist, were hospitalised in Sunzha.
The NGO “Committee for the Prevention of Torture”, based in Nizhny Novogrod, continues the work of “the Committee against Torture”, winner of the Assembly’s 2011 Human Rights Prize, which was dissolved in August 2015 after being registered as a “foreign agent” by the Russian Ministry of Justice.