World Must Never Forget Russian Crimes Against the Chechen Nation, Lithuania’s Sajudis Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 7 – Twenty-five years ago this week, the Russian government unleashed the first of two unprovoked wars of conquest against the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Moscow lost the first and recognized the right of Chechens to pursue their own course. It then ignored its commitments and launched an even more brutal war against the Chechens.

            Hundreds of thousands of Chechens were killed or forced to flee, an exodus that continues to this day; and yet as a result of Russian propaganda, many in the West believe the Chechens are to blame and especially for the second was because the Kremlin has falsely but successfully accused them of the 1999 apartment bombings that mobilized support for Putin.

            On this anniversary, the Vilnius Council of Sajudis, the Lithuanian movement which led that country to the recovery of its independence, has called on world leaders to focus on what Moscow has done and to bring justice to the Chechens (thechechenpress.com/news/15351-o-b-r-a-shch-e-n-i-e-vilnyusskogo-soveta-litovskogo-osvoboditelnogo-dvizheniya-sayudis-25-let-rossijskoj-agressii-protiv-chechenskoj-respubliki-ichkeriya.html).

            “On December 11, 1994,” Sajudis says, “a Russian military force numbering 90,000 to 120,000 soldiers and officers and about 6,000 units of various kinds of heavy weapons” attacked Chechnya from the territory of Ingushetia, Daghestan, and Stavropol kray … Thus began one of the bloodiest and lengthiest wars of current history.”

            Approximately 300,000 Chechens were killed, including “more than 40,000 children, some 20 percent of the republic’s population. And Russian forces killed the leaders of the Ichkeria government, Dzhokhar Dudayev in April 1996, Zelikhan Yandarbiyev in February 2004, Aslan Maskhadov in March 2005, and Abdul-Khalim Saydulayev in June 2006.

            But Russia did not win the first post-Soviet Chechen war: the Chechens did; and on May 12, 1997, the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic Ichkeria concluded a peace treaty, signed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. In this way Russia recognized the independence of Chechnya both de facto and de jure.

            In September 1999, however, “Russia, having violated the peace treaty, again began a stil more pitiless and inhumane war. About 100,000 Russian soldiers were introduced into Chechnya,” heavily armed, and subsequently joined by as many as 100,000 more Russian military personnel. 

           

“The Russian army and forces of various special services carried out mass punitive operations in Chechnya,” Sajudis says; and “on the territory of Chechnya, Russia organized several dozen concentration camps where with particular cruelty were tortured, raped and killed Chechens of any age and sex, including children.”

            “In addition to the human victims, Chechnya suffered” enormous destruction of all kinds. “Entire cities and settlements were subject to destruction, as were factories, cultural and education institutions, medical facilities, and the rarest architectural, historical and cultural monuments.”

            “In essence, in view of the entire world, Russia committed a genocide of the Chechen people,” the Lithuanian movement says. And to try to justify what it had done and deflect responsibility, it accused falsely the Chechens of organizing various “terrorist actions” from apartment bombings to hostage takings.’

            According to Sajudis, “international organizations and the leaders of world powers did not give an assessment at the time of the actions of the Russian military machine in Chechnya, where the war was carried out against the entire people, nor did they demand that Russia be held responsible for its crimes against the Chechen people.”

            “Where is law and justice?” the Lithuanians ask.

            Further, “more than 300,000 Chechens left their country and became refugees, a process which continues to our days. Each year from Chechnya to Europe flee thousands of people who cannot live in constant fear as a result of the criminal regime and its terror, repressions and force set up by the Russian powers that be in Chechnya.”

            The great French philosopher André Glucksmann (1937-2015) “was one of the very few personalities in the world who decisively rejected the propaganda of the Kremlin which presented the lawful struggle of the Chechens for the de-colonization of their motherland as part of international terrorism.” 

            Glucksmann was “a passionate supporter of the independence of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria. For him, the struggle of a small Caucasus people over the course of three centuries from Russian tsars to Yeltsin and Putin was a symbol of love for freedom and the rejection of slavery.” He “prophetically predicted that “’the real problem of our era is a growing lack of sensitivity to Evil, to cruelty, and to suffering.”

            “We, the members of the Vilnius Council of the Lithuanian Liberation Movement Sajudis consider that Russia against the Chechen people over the course of several centuries has been committing the most serious crimes and has denied the right of the Chechen people to self-determination and independence.”

            “Guided by humane goals and legal principles,” the council continues, Sajudis calls on the leaders of the world to recognize Russian actions against the Chechen people as a genocide, to organize an investigation of these crimes, and to bring to international responsibility those Russians who were and are responsible.