As a human rights defender I have so often been desperately frustrated about the deafening silence and absent intervention of the so-called "International Community" concerning war crimes. Despite bodies such as the UN, The Council of Europe, the EU and some great human rights conventions - that help form the basis of what we claim to be a civilized international community - what happens when anger rages in our common house, the aggressor is afoot and our neighbour is in peril?
Shamefully little, and often too late - unless self-interest is at play, in which case the intervention becomes a bi-product rather than an instinctive and paramount rescue of peoples and populations.
There are many reasons for this: pragmatism; irresponsibility; cowardice - to name but a few. But I believe also in our media focused world we have lost some of our natural perception of others people's pain. Many keep an abstract distance to cruelty and simply refuse to take in the nature of what happens to both perpetrators and victims in a war crime situation. It may be for reasons of some kind of self protection - he who does not see must not identify, and act according to his conscience!
A friend of mine, Khassan Baiev, is a renowned Chechen surgeon. He wrote a book: "The Oath" from his mission serving all victims of war, whether they were Chechen or Russian. In his book he writes from his entry into the village of Samashki fourteen years ago, after a particularly cruel Russian massacre on the Chechen civil population there. I ask you to read it. It is a graphic illustration of the Russian warfare in all its cruelty. Two hundred people were killed in that massacre. Two hundred thousand people have been killed in Chechnya during the two Russian wars, so you can multiply Samashki by one thousand to get an impression of this Russian crime against humanity - the greatest war crime in Europe since World War Two.
In whichever country you are, dear reader, I can guarantee that your Government and your politicians knew about it then and they know about it now. So ask yourself: What precisely did they do to stop it, and what initiatives do they now take to correct it? Your insistence can make a difference. This is the core of the mission of Chechnya Peace Forum.
Ivar Amundsen
Director, Chechnya Peace Forum
Excerpt from Khassan Baiev's The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire (Pocket Books, 2004), pp. 124-125.
In early April 1995 enormous explosions could be heard in the west, sounding like the cracks of thunder over the mountains. I guessed that villages were being shelled, and I jumped into my car and started towards Samashki to treat the wounded. At the entrance of the village, the Russians turned everyone back. What happened in those three terrible days between April 7 and April 9 I only learned later when the Russian military lifted the blockade and let medical personnel enter the village.
It was a bloodbath. Russian attacks on Chechen villages usually started in the same way with the military accusing townspeople of harbouring fighters. However, in most cases - and Samashki was no exception - the town elders had already negotiated with the Chechen field commander to depart from the village with his troops. In Samashki, the Russians then demanded the elders hand over sixty-four rifles. The elders explained they didn't have the rifles. This became the excuse the Russians needed to start a punishment raid, moving their armour and shooting everyone in their path, including elders, women and children. If the townspeople had rifles, they would have opened fire, but there was no resistance and the soldiers reached the centre of town quickly.
People hid in their basements, and the soldiers lobbed grenades in after them, then torched the houses. Bombs rained down. The rampage lasted several hours. When complete, the soldiers loaded their lorries with video recorders, television sets, carpets, and furniture looted from the houses left standing.
When the Russian military authorities opened up the village two days later, I went in with Red Cross workers. I hesitate to write about the atrocities we saw because I fear that people will think I am exaggerating. Dozens of charred corpses of women and children lay in the courtyard of the mosque, which had been destroyed. The first thing my eye fell on was the burned body of a baby, lying in foetal position. The flesh had burned off the arms, and you could see the white of the finger bones. I couldn't tell if it was a girl or a boy. A wild-eyed woman emerged from a burned-out house holding a dead baby. Trucks with bodies piled in the back rolled through the streets on the way to the cemetery.
While treating the wounded, I heard stories of young men - gagged and trussed up - dragged with chains behind personnel carriers. I heard of Russian aviators who threw Chechen prisoners, screaming, out of their helicopters. There were rapes, but how many it was hard to know because women were too ashamed to report them. One girl was raped in front of her father. I heard one case in which the mercenaries grabbed a newborn baby, threw it among each other like a ball, then shot it dead in the air. The accounts were hard to believe, as though the soldiers had taken leave of their senses and become rabid dogs. More than 200 people died, and many more were wounded.
Leaving the town for the hospital in Grozny, I passed a Russian armoured personnel carrier with the word ‘SAMASHKI' written on its side in bold, black letters. I looked in my rear-view mirror and to my horror saw a human skull mounted on the front of the vehicle. The bones were white; someone must have boiled the skull to remove the flesh. At the first checkpoint, the troop carrier overtook me, and I saw painted on its other side the words ‘GENERAL YERMOLOV', a reminder of the cruelty that this nineteenth-century Russian general visited on the North Caucasus.
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