The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), in the framework of their joint programme, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, wish to express their deep concern at the ongoing harassment of the human rights NGOs Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS) and Nizhny Novgorod Society for Human Rights (NNSHR) due to their human rights work on Chechnya.
Administrative measures and legal proceedings
The Observatory is concerned at the decision by the Ministry of Justice to halt the activities of the Nizhny Novgorod Society for Human Rights (NNSHR) through a written notification received on 3 June 2005. According to the Ministry, this decision was taken because NNSHR had allegedly not transmitted to them the documentation they had requested in the framework of an audit into the organisation’s activities, which started in February 2005. However, NNSHR claims they had conformed with all their obligations in this respect, which was confirmed by a court decision in April 2005.
The Observatory is gravely concerned about this measure and fears that a similar decision be taken in the case of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS), which is also subjected to judicial harassment. A court hearing was scheduled to be held on 8 June 2005 relating to allegations of accounting irregularities by the Ministry of Justice. It should be held instead on 28 June.
Indeed, pursuant to an audit by the Main Department at the Federal Registration Service of the Ministry of Justice of Nizhny Novgorod Region, a complaint was lodged against the RCFS on 8 April 2005, before the Court of Nizhny Novgorod Region, aiming at closing down the organisation, on the basis of the allegation that RCFS had failed to provide some documents to the Ministry. This measure was taken as much of the material required had already been provided to the Tax Inspection office which is also auditing into the organisation’s accounts. On 25 April 2005, the first court hearing took place, but legal investigation was postponed until 25 May, due to the absence of Mr. Stanislav Dmitrievsky, managing director of RCFS and chief editor for the publications of the Information Centre of RCFS, who, on that same day, was summoned to the prosecutor’s office to give evidence in connection with a judicial case against the Pravozaschita newspaper (see below). The hearing was first postponed to 8 June 2005 and then once again to 28 June 2005, due to Mr. Dmitrievsky’s absence for professional reasons. It must be noted that the audit took place in contradiction with the Russian Law on Public Association, which provides that the registration body has the right to conduct regular inspection of all activities of an organisation only once a year. The last regular audit of RCFS was conducted in July 2004 and no law breach was found at that time.
On 11 January 2005, the prosecutor’s office of Nizhny Novgorod Region initiated a case against the Pravozaschita (Human Rights Defence) newspaper, a joint publication by RCFS and the NNSHR, for publishing statements by Messrs. Akhmed Zakaev and Aslan Maskhadov, two Chechen separatist leaders, calling for a peaceful end to the Russian - Chechen conflict. Several members of RCFS’s Information Centre have been summoned and interrogated in relation to the ongoing investigation. Mr. Dmitrievsky, as chief editor of the newspaper, could be possibly charged with inciting to ethnic, racial or religious hatred (article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), an offence liable to up to a two years imprisonment sentence.
Finally, in March 2005, the Federal Security Service (FSB) Department in the Chechen Republic received a special mandate from the Nizhny Novgorod Region Department of the FSB to summon the staff of the Information Centre of the RCFS. Seven Chechen staff members of the centre whose contracts had been seized on January 20, 2005 by the FSB at RCFS Nizhny Novgorod office (See Open Letter of the Observatory, dated 26 January 2005) were interrogated as a means of intimidation. Some of them subsequently decided to quit their jobs at the Information Centre.
Intimidation and smear campaigns
From February to April 2005, RCFS members and Mr. Dmitrievsky in particular, were subjected to a smear campaign that was launched in mass media venues of Nizhny Novgorod. Such TV channels as RTR-News of Privolzh’e, the NTR, Volga, the APN news agency, and The Novoye Delo newspaper participated in discrediting them on the basis of commentaries made by representatives of the prosecutor’s office of Nizhny Novgorod Region and the FSB, who accused the RCFS staff, inter alia, of inciting to extremist activities and supporting acts of terror. The TV channels made attempts to produce a negative image of the RCFS by showing videos of crimes committed by terrorists as the background of their commentaries.
Furthermore, on 14 March 2005, Mrs. Oksana Chelysheva, editor at the Information Centre of RCFS, was threatened and insulted in the neighbourhood of her place of residence; unidentified people distributed leaflets containing direct threats, insults, slanderous statements, and displayed her name and her address. The flyers were distributed in the mailboxes of residents in three apartment buildings on Iyulskikh Dney Street and were also posted with tape on the doorways of the buildings. They were signed by an unknown organization called Youth Patriotic Front of A.P. Ivanov.
Following the criminal case introduced by Mrs. Chelysheva and Mr. Dmitrievsky on 15 March 2005, the prosecutor’s office of Kanavino district of Nizhny Novgorod recognised Mrs. Chelysheva as a victim and offered her to be accompanied by an armed bodyguard; she has refused the offer for the time present. RCFS suspects agents of FSB who were conducting the investigation into the criminal Pravozaschita case in January-April 2005 of being involved into providing the information to the authors of those leaflets as they had access to the particulars of RCFS staff members.
It should be noted that FSB officers have also attempted to blacken the reputation of Mrs. Petimat Tokaeva, RCFS reporter responsible for Achkhoy-Martan district, by telling her neighbours that she was their informer.
The Observatory is seriously concerned about the judicial and administrative harassment against the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society and the Nizhny Novgorod Society for Human Rights, which visibly aims to put an end to their activities. The Observatory is also concerned about the physical and psychological integrity of the members of these two organisations and recalls that RCFS members have been continuously victims of threats and acts of harassment. One of its volunteers, Mr. Aslan Sheripovich Davletukaev, was tortured and killed in January 2004 (See Observatory Annual Report 2004).
The Observatory strongly urges the Russian Federation authorities to:
– ensure that NNSHR be able to resume its activities in the soonest delay, without any fear of being subjected to any kind of reprisal in reason of their activities;
– put an end to all acts of harassment against the members of both organisations, in particular Mr. Stanislav Dmitrievsky and RCFS’s Information Centre’s collaborators living in Chechnya;
– comply with the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly of United Nations on 9 December 1998; in particular its article 1 that states “Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels”, as well as article 12.2., which states that “The State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration”.
– comply with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the regional and international human rights instruments ratified by the Russian Federation.
In hope you will take these requests into account,
We remain,
Sidiki KABA
President of FIDH
Eric SOTTAS Director of OMCT