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SNA CHECHENPRESS, April, 12th 2008
The Caucasian Knot publication observes the discussion in the Live Journal blogs following the publication of an extract from the documentary ‘Chechen Trap’ about the military actions in Chechnya in the spring of 1995 by the bloggerhttp://dmitryhorse.livejournal.com/.
The extract from the film discusses the May 1995 events in Shatoy, where the Chechen fighters had encircled about 200 Russian invaders, the so-called Ulyanovsk Paratroopers. Then the Russian paratroopers took hostages the whole village, declaring to the Chechen side: ‘If you shoot, we shall cut out all the women and children’.
The Commander of the Russian force, Alexander Pavlov, told the journalists on camera, smiling, how that ultimatum helped the paratroopers to keep the village until the reinforcements arrived. The Chechen forces, who enjoyed numerical superiority and demanded the Russians to disarm, dared not open fire on the enemy thus risking lives of Shatoi civilians.
The blogger raised the question: why the commander’s actions, being essentially similar to the notorious events in Dubrovka theatre and Beslan, are being described in the movie as, literally, a ‘heroic act’? Is not this approach based on double standards applied to the behaviour of ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’ at war? ‘Because the essence of these actions is similar: taking civilians hostages,’ dmitryhorse remarks.
The discussion has attracted much interest from the bloggers and encouraged them to discuss and assess various episodes of the Chechen campaigns.
Russian invaders were the first to introduce the practice of hostage-taking into this war. Their act of terror in Shatoi took place before Shamil Basayev’s attack on Buddyonovsk. Even before the Shatoi events, Rokhlin’s group captured the building complex of the Republican Hospital in Grozny. Civilians were forcibly kept in that hospital, and the fire on residential buildings was opened from its windows.
According to the survey ‘Behind the backs of peaceful civilians’ by the Memorial human rights centre, the Russians also used the ‘living shield’ tactics in Samashki in March 1996. The survey, based on numerous eye-witness accounts, reads:
‘The Russian militaries used peaceful civilians from Samashki to protect armoured vehicles with their bodies. Apparently, this was caused by the fact that, throughout the Chechen War, armoured vehicles proved defenceless against the grenade-launchers’ fire in the conditions of urban warfare.’
Similar events took place in August 1996 in Grozny’s district known as 15th Gorodok. The Memorial cites the testimony of Magomed Taramov who was taken hostage by the federal forces:
‘…In 15th Gorodok, they covered our eyes and ordered us to lie down on the ground… Then four people were randomly picked up, including my son and me. They brought us towards an armoured vehicle. I thought they would now hang us or shoot… Two of them brought me up onto the vehicle, so I thought they would now hang me. But they just put me up there, put another captive behind me, and tied us with a wire… I understood they would just use us as a living shield: they wanted to get through along the Lenin Street hoping the militants would have some mercy on us and would not shoot. After some fifteen minutes of the vehicle going I realised we were now in Khankala.’
Later, most of the civilians captured in Gorodok were exchanged for the bodies of Russian troops, POWs, and food which the captives’ relatives brought to the Russian checkpoints.
In August 1996, some of the staff and patients in Grozny’s Hospital No 9 were taken hostages by the invaders. The latter demanded a safe passage out of the encirclement:
‘…The forces found themselves in a difficult position, so they communicated to their commanders and asked for reinforcements,’ Memorial tells. ‘However, as the soldiers later told to the hospital staff, the reply was: “There will be no reinforcements; fight to the end”.’
So the invaders, according to the hospital staff, locked and mined the entrances and announced: ‘Nobody can leave’. Only two windows were left open to the hospital’s courtyard in order to bring water and food supplies into the building. A number of hostages escaped through that route. Russian terrorists had their emplacements on every floor of the building. According to surgery nurse Larisa Bokayeva:
‘210 patients in hard condition were in the basement. Because the federal forces did not allow us to provide medical aid to those patients, they literally rotted there. Many died. Often, the militaries would not allow us to go to the basement or get the medicines, it all depended on their moods. We had two corpses in our section. They started to decompose, but militaries would not allow us to bury them.’
There were 60 to 90 Russian terrorists in the building, according to the Chechen officers who took part in negotiations with them. The terrorists threatened to riddle the basement with hand-grenades and kill all the wounded if the Chechens tried to assault the hospital. Later, the terrorists were given a safe passage in exchange for the lives of the hostages.
‘We agreed to negotiations only in order to free the patients,’ one of the participants from the Chechen side is quoted as saying. ‘There were many women, many old people with liver disease, kidney disease. There were a lot of native Russians among them, too… And the Russian troops agreed to negotiations only because we held some POWs, one Senior Lieutenant and some soldiers. As a result of the negotiations, the troops were given a safe passage, armed; they were not demanded to lay arms down. They went away with their arms and could fight on elsewhere. They did not demand that, that was our proposal.’
While retreating from the hospital to their military base, the Russian terrorists still used the hostages as a living shield. They demanded that 100 people would accompany them on the passage. Hospital staff, patients in better condition and their families volunteered to do that. So the retreating Russians, who also brought away their wounded and killed, were encircled with the living shield. After the hostages came back from the Russian military base, fire was opened on the hospital. Young nurse Toita Kutukhanova was killed and five people among the hospital staff and patients were wounded.
In October 2004 Vladimir Ustinov, then the Prosecutor-General of Russia, proposed to the State Duma to pass legislation allowing ‘counter-hostage-taking’, which would practically legalise the terror against civilian population. ‘Detention of the terrorists’ relatives during a terrorist attack would certainly help us save people’s lives,’ Ustinov said. The State Duma Chairman Boris Gryzlov then announced that the Duma would be prepared to consider an amendment to anti-terrorist legislation regarding the so-called counter-hostage-taking.
The Memorial Human Rights Centre claims that the practice of taking the Chechen militaries’ families (including children and old people) hostages was used in the Russian attempts to force late Aslan Maskhadov to surrender, to put similar pressure on former Brigade General Magomed Khambiyev, and during the Beslan events.
The above facts demonstrate that the actions of Alexander Pavlov, who took civilian population hostages, were far from extraordinary in the course of Russian aggression against Chechnya. However, the dominant opinion in Russia still attributes such crimes only to the Chechen side.
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