 Akhmed Zakaev’s speech in House of Lordst
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to start by thanking the organisers of this meeting. Thank you most sincerely.
News of the death of Shamil Basaev has evoked mixed responses from around the world. I knew Shamil from the start of the first anti-Chechen war. At that time he was a fearless, tireless and ingenious commander, motivated by high ideals of freedom, independence and human rights. Although he accepted responsibility for the tragedies of Nord-Ost and Beslan, those directly involved in the hostage-taking were dozens of other young men and women.
If we want to seek an explanation, we shall have to acknowledge that these people decided to commit suicide because of the horrors in the life around them. The limitless cruelty of the Russians in Chechnya and its neighbouring republics was the main instigator both of Nord-Ost and Beslan. The crime of these people is that they mistakenly imagined that the Russian military machine could be halted if faced with the prospect of the public killing of thousands of their own civilian population or children.
There is absolutely no basis for the optimism of those who imagine that the death of Shamil Basaev will bring the conflict in the North Caucasus to an end. When that conflict began in the early 1990s nobody had heard of Shamil Basaev, because he didn’t exist. He emerged in the course of the conflict. The person we are talking about today was born in June 1995 during the events in Budyonnovsk. If the first war, which by any measure was less cruel than the present one, gave birth to Basaev, you can be quite certain that we now have hundreds of young people throughout the North Caucasus who value their own life and the lives of others no more highly than did Basaev. It is not individuals who have been radicalised, but generations. Violence is the companion of conflict, not its cause.
The present and future of any conflict must be defined first and foremost by the nature of that conflict. You have probably heard dozens of versions of the origins of the conflict between Russia and Chechnya. Oil reserves and the international Islamic terrorism have less than anything else to do with how that conflict arose.
The latest Russo-Chechen conflict has now been going on for fifteen years. It began in 1991 when Russia refused to recognise the political status, which Chechnya had obtained in 1990 within the framework of the new legislation of the USSR. As the legal successor state of the USSR, Russia acknowledged the entire Soviet inheritance, including the USSR’s debts and the status of the Kuril Islands, the Crimea and Koenigsberg, which had been determined by the supreme authority of the USSR.
It is a matter of great moment that Russia, 15 years later, has recognised the right to self-determination of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Pridnestrovie. They have stated that it is necessary to complete the legal dissolution of the USSR, meaning by this that the legal basis of the sovereignty of these republics derives from Soviet legislation. This is a readily verifiable juridical fact. It is sufficient to note that the status and boundaries of the states recognised today, which were x-members of the USSR, have also without exception been inherited from the USSR. Decisions taken by the Soviet authorities in the 1950s cannot be any more legitimate than decisions taken in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Soviet debts, which Russia has repaid, are not restricted to loans made in the 1950s.
It is difficult to summarise briefly the situation, which has evolved around Abkhazia, Pridnestrovie, South Ossetia and Chechnya. The most important thing to note is that it has no basis in law. In the first three cases there is an international presence represented by leading countries and including organisations of the European Community. In the case of the Chechen Republic, the only matter under discussion has from the outset been human rights, which, according to European official representatives, have been steadily improving since 2000. These assertions are rooted not in humane concern but in political calculation. Erroneous calculation, as is becoming clear.
I am deeply convinced that economic interests of certain countries and political careers of certain politicians should not be more important than the fate of a million people nation. More than 250 thousand of innocent victims amongst the civilians, 40 thousand of them children, serve as a sufficient ground to initiate a war tribunal against Russian war criminals.
Russia’s refusal to recognise the independence of the Chechen Republic, and its subsequent unleashing of a war, created false expectations among many people regarding the possible resolution of post-Soviet conflicts. Georgia, Moldavia and their friends have been clinging for fifteen years to the notion, put forth by Russia, of territorial integrity instead of concentrating on their own internal shortcomings. Many people would like to see Russia subjugate Chechnya as soon as possible, imagining that after this their own “territorial integrity” will be restored. It is absolutely true that Russia’s position on Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Pridnestrovie has been largely determined by the course of events in Chechnya, but not in the sense that Russia will renounce its claims to them after a victory in Chechnya.
In 1991 Russia was unable to officially declare the right of peoples to self-determination, since that would automatically have applied also to the Chechen Republic, which at that time nobody was calling a centre of international Islamic terrorism. In place of de jure recognition, Russia has constantly striven towards de facto integration of the above-mentioned republics. An absolute majority of the inhabitants of these territories have received Russian citizenship.
It is an undeniable achievement of Putin’s policy towards Chechnya that he has made the leaders of the USA and Europe recognise his anti-Chechen war as part of a struggle against international Islamic terrorism. How he went about that is another story. The Kremlin already had experience of linking the Chechen issue with international problems. Stalin, for instance, when he tackled the Chechen issue in 1944 (by deporting the entire nation to the steppes of Kazakhstan and Siberia), accused the Chechen people of collaborating with the fascist Germans, even though the Nazis never succeeded in occupying Chechnya. Stalin’s democratic allies could find his statements understandable at the time. This time round, too, presenting Chechnya, as one of the main breeding-grounds for international Islamic terrorism seems conveniently to suit public opinion at home in Russia, and also in the West.
Putin is confident that the present Western leaders will be unable to change their publicly stated attitude towards Chechnya, no matter what he does in respect of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Pridnestrovie. Georgia and Moldavia will to the bitter end utter not one word about the Chechens’ right to self-determination since, unlike Russia, they have no prospect of aggrandisement. Putin seems to have calculated correctly when he should declare his support for the right of peoples to self-determination. Less than two years remain of his second term of office, and he would like to have achievements to show. Augmenting Russia’s territory after the collapse of the USSR might be a highly admirable achievement in the eyes of the protagonists of Russia’s great power status, to whom Putin is constantly appealing.
Replying to the question of a BBC correspondent on the Chechen people’s right to self-determination, Putin referred to the supposed referendum conducted in Chechnya on 23 March 2003. Quite apart from the well-known facts about the circumstances and manner in which this pseudo-referendum was conducted, there is one absolute non sequitur here. Putin pointed this out with a frankness rarely to be observed in a KGB officer. For the first time, referring on national television on the evening of 23 March 2003 to the referendum which had just taken place, the President of Russia said literally: “De jure the territorial integrity of Russia has been restored”. The same claim was repeated in the President’s message to the Federal Assembly shortly afterwards. If, by Putin’s own admission, Chechnya was not de jure a part of Russia before 23 March, 2003 then, on the one hand, what was its status prior to that date? And on the other hand, what right had Putin to decree that a referendum should be conducted on someone else’s territory?
I would like to explain what the Russian government is so afraid of and so determined to suppress, that they have spent more time and money than was spent on the Sarcophagus built around the Chernobyl nuclear power station.
Since the beginning of the Russian-Chechen war in December, 1994 every attempt of the world community to become involved in the peaceful solution of the conflict has been halted by the thesis of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. Today, when our conflict has degenerated into a vicious circle, it is extremely important to examine it from the point of view of its legality. Epithets such as "self-declared", "separatist", "rebel", "unrecognised" or “international terrorist” are frequently used to describe the Chechen Republic. They are not based on historical and legal fact, and are very provocative.
The sovereign status of the Chechen Republic is as legitimate as was the USSR, and now, the Russian Federation. In April 1990, during Gorbachev`s reforms of the Soviet system, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted two laws of paramount importance for the nations of the Soviet Union.
On the 27th November 1990, following an official edict of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Supreme Soviet of the Chechen-Ingush Republic adopted a Declaration on State Sovereignty; this meant cessassion from the Russian Federation.
Throughout the life of the USSR, anything to do with the legal status, “statehood” and borders of the various ethnic entities within the country was the exclusive prerogative of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. An example: the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic was liquidated in 1944 and re-established in 1957 by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Another example: during the 1950s, the Crimean Autonomous Republic was taken away from Russia and handed to the Ukraine, again by decision of the USSR Supreme Soviet. It was also the USSR Supreme Soviet, which after the Second World War assigned Kőnigsberg and several Japanese islands to the Russian Federation.
The reason why I am going into such detail is so that you can understand that there was no uprising, no seizing of power by armed separatists. The sovereignty of the Chechen Republic was established by the adoption in the USSR of several new laws in April 1990, and therefore was absolutely legal and legitimate under Soviet law, Russian law and international law.
When the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991, the Chechen Republic had existed for more than a year as a sovereign state, recognised in the legal system of the USSR, equal to all the “Union Republics” (Russia, Georgia, the Ukraine, Baltic states and others) and was preparing to sign the new Union Treaty.
You may remember that the August Coup against Gorbachev in 1991 had one prime objective: to prevent the signatures and ratification of the new Union Treaty. The delegation from the Chechen-Ingush Republic was in Moscow with the delegations from all the other republics, preparing to sign and ratify the new Union Treaty. I was on that delegation.
Where did the term “Chechnya is part of Russia” come from.
In October 1993 President Yeltsin ordered troops to fire on the Russian Parliament and dissolved the Parliament. When President Yeltsin ordered a referendum for a Russian Constitution there was no Russian Parliament and no Russian Constitution. As the Chechen Republic had a Parliament since 1991, which had adopted a Constitution in 1992, the Chechen Republic did not participate in the Russian referendum. The Russian presidency violated all possible legal norms when it included the Chechen Republic as a “subject“ of the Russian Federation in the Russian Constitution.
The Chechen people is now openly resisting enslavement and defending its right to self-determination. The Russian government has, however, refused to apply the policy of de-colonization and compliance with international law.
Law and historical justice are on the side of the Chechen nation. There can be no forgiving for the violence and blood that Russia is spilling and mass murder of innocent civilian in the context of what is called the war on terror.
You will be interested to know that during the first war of 1994 – 1996 we were branded as bandits, separatists, fascists, all sorts of things, but no Russian politician dreamed of calling us fundamentalists or Islamic terrorists, let alone international terrorists.
The late President Maskhadov made many statements condemning terrorism in all its manifestations, and also pointed out that the Chechen civilian population was being terrorised by the Russian soldiers. As the official representative of acting president Dokku Umarov of the Chechen Republic, I can state officially that our attitude to acts of terrorism has not changed since the murder of Aslan Maskhadov and Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev. President Umarov has publicly condemned all forms of violence against civilians. The Chechen government understands that acts of terrorism are in the interests of those who want to pass off a criminal colonial war against the Chechen nation as a war against international terrorism.
I most fervently wish for the civilised world to prevail against terrorism. Terror is evil. The civilised world should be fighting for Justice. I believe that is the best way to defeat terrorism.
Dear friends, after 15 years of attempts to settle by force the Russo-Chechen conflict, which started as a purely political conflict, Russia has only succeeded in making that conflict worse. The 1992 Federation Treaty, has been the first occasion EVER in the history of the Russian empire when dozens of ethnic republics willingly signed up to be part of the Russian state, has been completely and unilaterally denounced by Russia itself. Firstly, there is the attempt to make the status of occupied Chechnya the same as the status of those republics, which had signed that Federation Treaty. Secondly, over the last few years the Russian leadership refused those ethnic republics the right to enjoy their civil and religious rights, in the best traditions of colonial conquest. Today the ethnic republics do not have the right to elect their leaders, they do not have the right to their own religion, and they do not even have the right to their own alphabets.
The country, which the world knows as Russia, is a classic example of a colonial power in which anti-colonial fires are beginning to flare up. Let no one be fooled by the religious rhetoric of those who are a part of the national liberation movements within Russia. These people do not have any affinity with networks of international Islamic terrorism. It’s simply that after the liberation of Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia and the Baltic States from the Russian yoke, it is only the Muslim nations in a relationship of colonial dependency. As you know, to call upon God when times are hard is something that all peoples do, whatever their religion. The name of God for Muslims is Allah, and in truth, Allah Akbar! We are all in His hands and call upon His mercy.
I also think it is my duty to remind you that the illusions some political circles have about Russia’s democratic progress are fatally dangerous for the whole mankind, because there are serious and convincing reasons to believe that Russia is developing not by any well-known democratic principles but using the principle of opposing Russia’s interests to the interests of the rest of the world.
The expectations, which the West publicly voiced of the newly elected President of Russia, have been proved to be without foundation, as, is now generally admitted. A campaign of terror against a small nation cannot lead to positive results. The predictable consequences of a criminal war unleashed against Chechnya, which is now in its seventh year, have been a restriction of democratic freedoms, including the abolition of free speech, of freedom for private business activity, and of freedom for minority religions. Politically motivated criminal prosecutions, harassment of civil rights organizations, violation of citizens’ electoral rights, ever-strengthening fascism, and gross interference in the internal affairs of neighbouring states, instead, have all been very much in evidence.
I understand that the world needs to find a way to make Russia comply with the legal rules of conduct in the family of the nations of the world. By urging Russia to stop the genocide of the Chechen people the international community will not lose Russia as a partner. On the contrary, that would make Russia seriously think about potential problems it may face if it ignores the demands of the rest of the civilised world.
I would like to appeal to the international community to use all available resources to end the physical and moral extermination of the Chechen people.
The harsh experience of the last decade shows that there is no possible military solution to the Russo-Chechen conflict.
It is our profoundly held conviction that the violence in Chechnya and in the North Caucasus can be stopped only by a political settlement. A political farce like the holding in Chechnya of a so-called “referendum”, the elections of Presidents Kadirov and Alkhanov, or the “parliamentary elections”, have nothing in common with a real political process. All that just delay the day when a peaceful settlement will be achieved, and they lead to an expansion of the theatre of war. The responsibility for these consequences lies on the Russian government and the International community.
Thank you for your attention.
18 July 2006
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