Encouraging Sign Arab News 27 July 2003

Opinion, July 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Encouraging Sign

Arab News 27 July 2003

The final conviction of a senior Russian officer for the rape and murder of a Chechen girl offers the first glimmer of hope that Moscow will face up to its responsibilities under international law in Chechnya. At his first trial, Col. Yuri Budanov admitted killing Kheda Kungayeva in March 2000 but the military court accepted that he had been temporarily insane. He was sentenced to undergo psychiatric treatment. This verdict was overthrown in February by the Russian Supreme Court. After a retrial by another military court, Budanov was last week found guilty of murder, stripped of his rank and medals and sentenced to 10 years in jail.

That such a senior officer has been forced to admit his crime will hopefully send an important message to all ranks in the Russian forces struggling to quell the Chechen insurrection. Whatever Moscow may have claimed to the contrary, for much of the Russian military in Chechnya it has been open season on hapless Chechen civilians who have been brutalized and terrorized in the savage war. It is therefore encouraging that the Russians themselves, despite huge popular feeling against the Chechens following the Moscow theater outrage, are apparently putting their own house in order. In April last year, Russia narrowly escaped censure in a vote, sponsored by the European Union at the United Nations, which accused it of extensive human rights violations in Chechnya and called for an international enquiry.

But one swallow however does not make a spring. The Russian authorities must be seen to be altogether more proactive from now on, not only in ensuring that their troops behave properly with the Chechens but also in investigating numerous allegations of crimes committed against these hapless people.

There is of course a far bigger issue and that is resolving Chechen demands for independence. Ever since Czarist Russia expanded its rule into the Caucasus, it has met dogged resistance, not just from the Chechens first under the extraordinary Imam Shamyl, who was finally defeated in 1858, but from other ethnic minorities in Dagestan and Abkhazia. Despite Stalinist deportations and the flight of over a million Chechens, the struggle for independence has never truly ceased.

The crimes committed by Russian soldiers against the Chechens represent in microcosm the anger and frustration of the authorities in Moscow at their inability to win a military victory. President Putin came to power with a foolish promise to end the Chechen rebellion by force and in 2000 instituted direct rule from Moscow. It is now time for the Kremlin to recognize that its policy of military force has failed. The only way to stop the atrocities perpetrated by the likes of the Budanov and his opponents among the Chechen rebels is to restart negotiations.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).