Today our Daily News Bulletin will be received by well over a thousand new readers among whom are members of the European Parliament, Council of Europe and European national parliaments. I welcome you to our website and to our Daily News Bulletin.
Chechnya Peace Forum is an independent initiative established in London in 2006. Our mission is to bring the atrocities in Chechnya to greater international attention and to mobilize involvement for restoring liberty, human rights, democracy and the rule of law to the Chechen people, but we realize that this cannot be viewed in isolation and must be seen in context of what else is happening in Russia and the Caucasus today.
The profound lack of democracy, civil liberties and security for the people of Russia is therefore of equal concern to the Chechnya Peace Forum. Our cause has three dimensions: justice and security for the Chechen people; geopolitical balance in the Caucasus; development of true liberty, freedom and civil law in the Russian civic society. For a more detailed outline of our ambitions I wish to refer to a speech I made just last month to the European Parliament here.
The Daily News Bulletin is a brief and informative digest of news concerning Russia and the Caucasus. Our website also regularly features exclusive guest articles. Under "News & Media" you will find articles by Rt Hon Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP, British Foreign Secretary 1995-1997; Professor John Russell, Bradford University; and Oksana Chelysheva, Russian journalist and human rights campaigner. A more recent contribution by David Satter, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, appears on the front page.
The Chechnya Peace Forum organizes seminars and conferences with distinguished speakers, and we also concentrate our efforts towards European organizations working in a human rights context.
Last week Russian president Dmitry Medvedev instructed the FSB (Federal Security Service) to end the security regime in Chechnya from April 16. This formally ends the second Russian war on Chechnya which began short of ten years ago and has cost an estimated one hundred thousand lives and bombed Chechen towns to gravel.
The Chechens have lost 200,000 lives during the two wars and another 130,000 have fled for political refuge in Western Europe. The Russian population in Chechnya which before the wars stood at around 380,000, is now decimated to a few thousand. An estimated 40,000 Russian civilians have been killed in the warfare, the rest fled to Russia.
Despite the announcement by Medvedev last week, the war continues. Peace cannot simply be achieved by claiming it to be so. Chechnya remains in the iron fist of the Kremlin, and the Chechen people remain subjected to a daily climate of fear and oppression without any avenues to seek justice or express their fundamental right to express the freedom of speech. The republic is run by a Moscow imposed puppet president, Ramzan Kadyrov, who was never elected by the Chechen people.
Peace and freedom do not become real under occupation and force. What Chechnya needs now is a free and fair election, properly monitored by international observers. Only when the Chechens can freely elect their own governance can real and lasting peace be achieved.
The West has a responsibility not to turn a blind eye and think the war is over. Rest assured that the Chechnya Peace Forum will continue to tirelessly campaign to keep Chechnya and the struggle of its people on the international agenda.
Ivar Amundsen
Director, Chechnya Peace Forum
