Reply #6: Chechnya Gripped by Stalinist Terror, or WhereDo Suicide Bombers Come From

[HuckleB]

Chechnya Gripped by Stalinist Terror, or Where Do Suicide Bombers Come From

http://www.mosnews.com/feature/2004/09/01/terror.shtml

"Why are women traveling from a remote southern Russian region all the way to Moscow to put on explosive belts and kill themselves, taking innocent bystanders’ lives with them? Oleg Orlov of the International Society Memorial, Russia’s top human rights organization, sheds light on the reasons that push Chechen suicide bombers to their drastic actions. The number of quiet, undocumented kidnappings of people from their homes by federal forces in Chechnya is comparable to statistics for the peak of Stalinist repressions in 1937-1938.

“Over the past one and a half years it’s become the biggest plague,” says Orlov of the kidnappings. Before, Chechen civilians used to be subjected to a different kind of horror, known as zachistki, or “mop-up operations.” As a way of combating guerillas, the military blocked off entire villages and then searched every house, checked everyone for ID, randomly detained people and questioned them. The questioning was more often than not combined with beatings and torture.

Then Russia’s president Vladimir Putin finally responded to mounting international pressure to improve the human rights situation in Chechnya and pointed out that the military must not swoop down on the entire population, but, rather, go after specific targets. In theory, that makes sense. But in Chechnya, targeted work has turned into targeted kidnappings. “People come in armored vehicles without license plates and take people away. Like in Stalin’s times,” Orlov says.

Memorial estimates that approximately 3,000 people had vanished in Chechnya during the four years from 1999 to 2003. Given Chechnya’s estimated population of 700,000, that works out to approximately 43 disappearances per every 10,000 people. During the height of Stalinist terror, people were plucked from their beds at night and taken away, never to be seen again; the figures for those years are, 44 disappearances per every 10,000 people. Back in those days, slander or hearsay information from a malevolent neighbor or co-worker was often enough to doom someone.

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