July, 14 2009, 10:20am EDT
Russia: Halt Punitive Attacks in Chechnya
New Reports of Revenge Killing and House Burnings of Those Accused of Links to Rebels
MOSCOW
Russian federal and Chechen local authorities should immediately put a stop to the punitive house-burning and other human rights violations in Chechnya and bring those responsible to justice, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch has documented two new cases in Chechnya in which the homes of families related to suspected insurgents were torched by local law-enforcement officials as well as a public extrajudicial killing of a man suspected of providing food to insurgents.
On July 2, 2009, Human Rights Watch published a report, "'What Your Children Do Will Touch Upon You': Punitive House-Burning in Chechnya", documenting a pattern of house burnings by security forces to punish families for the alleged involvement by their relatives in the insurgency.
"We have two more houses burned and at least one person killed just in the last couple of weeks," said Tanya Lokshina, deputy Moscow director at Human Rights Watch. "It's time for Russia's leaders to take a clear stand against this kind of brutal collective punishment instead of looking like they endorse it."
The two new cases of punitive house burnings documented by Human Rights Watch took place on June 29 and July 4, after the Kremlin gave Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov, authority to run counterinsurgency operations outside Chechnya, in neighboring Ingushetia. In one case, a daughter of the family, who reportedly had married a Chechen rebel, died under suspicious circumstances. The extrajudicial killing, supposedly of a man accused of selling food to the rebels, took place on July 7.
House Burnings
In the first new episode, Chechen law-enforcement personnel arrested 39-year-old Magomed Dadilov at his home in Shali on the evening of June 28. A relative told Human Rights Watch that four law-enforcement officers came for Dadilov when he was reciting his evening prayers and provided neither an arrest warrant nor an explanation for his arrest.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that at dawn the next day, a group of suspected Chechen law-enforcement personnel in masks and camouflage broke into the Dadilov family compound, locked all the family members inside one of the three houses on the compound, doused one of the other houses with gasoline, and set it on fire. Three families live on the compound, including 12 children between the ages of seven months and 14 years. All of them were screaming with fear as the law-enforcement personnel went about burning their home, the witnesses said.
Soon after the house was fully ablaze, the perpetrators left. Some of the family members called a local firefighter, a personal friend. He immediately came with several colleagues, and they put out the fire out before the walls and roof collapsed. The inside of the house was completely burned, however.
"The burning of this home fits the unmistakable, ghastly pattern that we and other groups have been documenting for some time," said Lokshina.
Dadilov was detained incommunicado for three days, then taken to the Shali district police department on July 1, where his detention was officially processed. At this writing, he is still being held on suspicion of participation in an illegal armed group and has had access to legal counsel.
A source close to the case said that Dadilov was held for the three-day period in an informal detention facility on the base of a patrol police unit, where he was reportedly coerced into providing a confession that he had assisted Abubakar Musliev, an alleged insurgent from Shali.
Musliev was killed on July 1 by security officials, according to official reports. The July 2 Human Rights Watch report includes an account of the burning of his family home, apparently as punishment for his activities, on August 28, 2008.
In the July 4 incident, armed law-enforcement personnel in Argun burned the home of the Yunusovs, whose 20-year-old daughter, Madina, recently married a man accused of involvement in the insurgency in Chechnya.
Two days earlier, on July 2, Madina Yunusova had been critically wounded in a special operation carried out by Chechen law-enforcement agencies in a house where she was staying in Staraya Sunzha, a village on the outskirts of Grozny. The law-enforcement personnel surrounded the home and killed Said-Selim Abdulkadyrov, alleged to be her husband.
Chechen law-enforcement agencies said that Abdulkadyrov was involved in a plot to assassinate Ramzan Kadyrov. Yunusova was taken into custody, placed under surveillance in a prison-type room of a hospital in Grozny, and reportedly underwent successful surgery for her wounds. However, she died under suspicious circumstances less than three days later.
According to the Yunusovs' relatives and neighbors, on July 3, police in Argun brought in her parents, Vakha and Laila, for several hours of interrogation about their daughter's connections to insurgents and then let them return home. A neighbor who witnessed the burning and others who spoke with the Yunusovs said that on July 4, between 3 and 4 a.m., a group of armed servicemen broke into the Yunusov family compound, locked the parents and two younger daughters, ages 4 and 6, in a shed, doused the house with gasoline from inside and set it on fire. Soon afterward, they unlocked the shed and left.
The Yunusovs managed to put the fire out with the help of their neighbors. The walls and roof remained intact, but Human Rights Watch observed that two of the rooms were badly burned. The family lost furniture, family memorabilia, money, and documents. The Yunusovs fled Argun several hours after the burning.
The next day, July 5, soon after dawn, Madina's corpse was delivered to her parents' already-burned home. The neighbors heard some noise and saw a group of law-enforcement officers knocking on the Yunusovs' gate. One of them reportedly said, "Where are your neighbors? We brought a corpse for them."
When informed that the Yunusovs were no longer in Argun, the officers took the body, which was wrapped in a shroud, from their vehicle and gave it to the neighbors, cautioning them not to unwrap it. The neighbors notified the Yunusovs, who buried the body.
The circumstances of Yunusova's death are unclear. Several patients at the hospital where she had been treated told Human Rights Watch that they saw her shortly after she arrived at the hospital. They said orderlies had told them that she had recovered from surgery and was healing well, and was talking and eating, but that she had cried out for her mother on the night of July 4. The other patients could not approach her room because it was heavily guarded by law-enforcement officers. The orderlies told the patients that Yunusova was alive when several law-enforcement officers in camouflage uniforms removed her from her room on a stretcher at dawn on July 5.
As with any death in custody, or that raises the possibility of official involvement, Russia is under a legal obligation to ensure that there is an effective investigation to determine any liability and responsibility for the death and, where appropriate, to ensure the prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators.
"This is clearly a suspicious death, which needs to be fully investigated," said Lokshina.
Extrajudicial Killing
Human Rights Watch also documented the extrajudicial killing of Abusubyan (Rizvan) Albekov, on July 7 in the village of Akhinchu-Borzoi in Kurchaloi district.
A local police officer named Ilyas came to Albekov's home in Akhinchu-Borzoi on July 6. Relatives told Human Rights Watch that when he did not find Albekov at home, Ilyas asked Albekov's daughter where he was and requested his cell phone number, which she provided. When Albekov did not return home in the evening, his worried relatives tried to reach him on his cell phone, but neither of his two cell phone numbers was working.
Several sources told Human Rights Watch that Kurchaloi district police personnel put up a roadblock that evening in the village of Dzhigurty and stopped Albekov and his 17-year-old son, Adis, when they drove through the village on their way home.
At about 1 a.m. on July 7, two cars drove through Akhinchu-Borzoi, circled the village and the law-enforcement officers in the cars rounded up about four young men. Several villagers, one of whom spoke with one of the young men, said that the drivers of the cars threw Albekov, who appeared to have been severely beaten, out of the car in front of the young men.
They asked Albekov, "Did you give a sheep to the rebels?" He shook his head and started begging incoherently for the release of his son. The drivers of the cars then shot Albekov and one said, "This is what's going to happen to anyone who helps the rebels!" Then they left, and the young men fled.
Later that day, a family member contacted the Kurchaloi district prosecutor's office, which sent officials to examine the body and question family members before the ritual washing and burial of the body. The next day, Albekov's family was threatened by Kurchaloi law-enforcement officers into signing a statement that Albekov had died of a stroke. The officers told the family that Adis would be also killed and all the relatives would suffer if they complained to any authorities or non-governmental agencies. The fate and whereabouts of Adis Albekov remains unknown.
"Reports of how Albekov was killed describe a cold-blooded extrajudicial execution," said Lokshina. "There needs to be a thorough and impartial investigation to bring those responsible to justice. Given the routine failure by Chechen authorities to hold perpetrators of crimes such as these accountable, the federal office of the prosecutor general should oversee the investigation."
Albekov's brother, Vakhazhi, was killed in October 2000 by a landmine in Chechnya. A third brother, Ramzan Albekov, filed a case against Russia with the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2008 that Russia had violated his brother's right to life.
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
LATEST NEWS
Critics Blast 'Reckless and Impossible' Bid to Start Operating Mountain Valley Pipeline
"The time to build more dirty and dangerous pipelines is over," said one environmental campaigner.
Apr 23, 2024
Environmental defenders on Tuesday ripped the company behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline for asking the federal government—on Earth Day—for permission to start sending methane gas through the 303-mile conduit despite a worsening climate emergency caused largely by burning fossil fuels.
Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC sent a letter Monday to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Acting Secretary Debbie-Anne Reese seeking final permission to begin operation on the MVP next month, even while acknowledging that much of the Virginia portion of the pipeline route remains unfinished and developers have yet to fully comply with safety requirements.
"In a manner typical of its ongoing disrespect for the environment, Mountain Valley Pipeline marked Earth Day by asking FERC for authorization to place its dangerous, unnecessary pipeline into service in late May," said Jessica Sims, the Virginia field coordinator for Appalachian Voices.
"MVP brazenly asks for this authorization while simultaneously notifying FERC that the company has completed less than two-thirds of the project to final restoration and with the mere promise that it will notify the commission when it fully complies with the requirements of a consent decree it entered into with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last fall," she continued.
"Requesting an in-service decision by May 23 leaves the company very little time to implement the safety measures required by its agreement with PHMSA," Sims added. "There is no rush, other than to satisfy MVP's capacity customers' contracts—a situation of the company's own making. We remain deeply concerned about the construction methods and the safety of communities along the route of MVP."
Russell Chisholm, co-director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition—which called MVP's request "reckless and impossible"—said in a statement that "we are watching our worst nightmare unfold in real-time: The reckless MVP is barreling towards completion."
"During construction, MVP has contaminated our water sources, destroyed our streams, and split the earth beneath our homes. Now they want to run methane gas through their degraded pipes and shoddy work," Chisholm added. "The MVP is a glaring human rights violation that is indicative of the widespread failures of our government to act on the climate crisis in service of the fossil fuel industry."
POWHR and activists representing frontline communities affected by the pipeline are set to take part in a May 8 demonstration outside project financier Bank of America's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Appalachian Voices noted that MVP's request comes days before pipeline developer Equitrans Midstream is set to release its 2024 first-quarter earnings information on April 30.
MVP is set to traverse much of Virginia and West Virginia, with the Southgate extension running into North Carolina. Outgoing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and other pipeline proponents fought to include expedited construction of the project in the debt ceiling deal negotiated between President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans last year.
On Monday, climate and environmental defenders also petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, challenging FERC's approval of the MVP's planned Southgate extension, contending that the project is so different from original plans that the government's previous assent is now irrelevant.
"Federal, state, and local elected officials have spoken out against this unneeded proposal to ship more methane gas into North Carolina," said Sierra Club senior field organizer Caroline Hansley. "The time to build more dirty and dangerous pipelines is over. After MVP Southgate requested a time extension for a project that it no longer plans to construct, it should be sent back to the drawing board for this newly proposed project."
David Sligh, conservation director at Wild Virginia, said: "Approving the Southgate project is irresponsible. This project will pose the same kinds of threats of damage to the environment and the people along its path as we have seen caused by the Mountain Valley Pipeline during the last six years."
"FERC has again failed to protect the public interest, instead favoring a profit-making corporation," Sligh added.
Others renewed warnings about the dangers MVP poses to wildlife.
"The endangered bats, fish, mussels, and plants in this boondoggle's path of destruction deserve to be protected from killing and habitat destruction by a project that never received proper approvals in the first place," Center for Biological Diversity attorney Perrin de Jong said. "Our organization will continue fighting this terrible idea to the bitter end."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Seismic Win for Workers': FTC Bans Noncompete Clauses
Advocates praised the FTC "for taking a strong stance against this egregious use of corporate power, thereby empowering workers to switch jobs and launch new ventures, and unlocking billions of dollars in worker earnings."
Apr 23, 2024
U.S. workers' rights advocates and groups celebrated on Tuesday after the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to approve a ban on most noncompete clauses, which Democratic FTC Chair Lina Khansaid "keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism."
"The FTC's final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market," Khan added, pointing to the commission's estimates that the policy could mean another $524 for the average worker, over 8,500 new startups, and 17,000 to 29,000 more patents each year.
As Economic Policy Institute (EPI) president Heidi Shierholz explained, "Noncompete agreements are employment provisions that ban workers at one company from working for, or starting, a competing business within a certain period of time after leaving a job."
"These agreements are ubiquitous," she noted, applauding the ban. "EPI research finds that more than 1 out of every 4 private-sector workers—including low-wage workers—are required to enter noncompete agreements as a condition of employment."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has suggested it plans to file a lawsuit that, as The American Prospectdetailed, "could more broadly threaten the rulemaking authority the FTC cited when proposing to ban noncompetes."
Already, the tax services and software provider Ryan has filed a legal challenge in federal court in Texas, arguing that the FTC is unconstitutionally structured.
Still, the Democratic commissioners' vote was still heralded as a "seismic win for workers." Echoing Khan's critiques of such noncompetes, Public Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert declared that such clauses "inflict devastating harms on tens of millions of workers across the economy."
"The pervasive use of noncompete clauses limits worker mobility, drives down wages, keeps Americans from pursuing entrepreneurial dreams and creating new businesses, causes more concentrated markets, and keeps workers stuck in unsafe or hostile workplaces," she said. "Noncompete clauses are both an unfair method of competition and aggressively harmful to regular people. The FTC was right to tackle this issue and to finalize this strong rule."
Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, praised the FTC for "listening to the comments of thousands of entrepreneurs and workers of all income levels across industries" and finalizing a rule that "is a clear-cut win."
Demand Progress' Emily Peterson-Cassin similarly commended the commission "for taking a strong stance against this egregious use of corporate power, thereby empowering workers to switch jobs and launch new ventures, and unlocking billions of dollars in worker earnings."
While such agreements are common across various industries, Teófilo Reyes, chief of staff at the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, said that "many restaurant workers have been stuck at their job, earning as low as $2.13 per hour, because of the noncompete clause that they agreed to have in their contract."
"They didn't know that it would affect their wages and livelihood," Reyes stressed. "Most workers cannot negotiate their way out of a noncompete clause because noncompetes are buried in the fine print of employment contracts. A full third of noncompete clauses are presented after a worker has accepted a job."
Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) executive director Mike Pierce pointed out that the FTC on Tuesday "recognized the harmful role debt plays in the workplace, including the growing use of training repayment agreement provisions, or TRAPs, and took action to outlaw TRAPs and all other employer-driven debt that serve the same functions as noncompete agreements."
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at Open Markets Institute, highlighted that the addition came after his group, SBPC, and others submitted comments on the "significant gap" in the commission's initial January 2023 proposal, and also welcomed that "the final rule prohibits both conventional noncompete clauses and newfangled versions like TRAPs."
Jonathan Harris, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and SBPC senior fellow, said that "by also banning functional noncompetes, the rule stays one step ahead of employers who use 'stay-or-pay' contracts as workarounds to existing restrictions on traditional noncompetes. The FTC has decided to try to avoid a game of whack-a-mole with employers and their creative attorneys, which worker advocates will applaud."
Among those applauding was Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United, who said that "the new FTC rule will limit the ability of employers to use debt to lock nurses into unsafe jobs and will protect their role as patient advocates."
Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, also cheered the effort to stop corporations from holding employees "hostage," saying that "this rule is a critical step for protecting our nation's workers and making labor markets fairer and more competitive."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Discriminatory' North Carolina Law Criminalizing Felon Voting Struck Down
One plaintiffs' attorney said the ruling "makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society."
Apr 23, 2024
Democracy defenders on Tuesday hailed a ruling from a U.S. federal judge striking down a 19th-century North Carolina law criminalizing people who vote while on parole, probation, or post-release supervision due to a felony conviction.
In Monday's decision, U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs—an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama—sided with the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute and Action NC, who argued that the 1877 law discriminated against Black people.
"The challenged statute was enacted with discriminatory intent, has not been cleansed of its discriminatory taint, and continues to disproportionately impact Black voters," Biggs wrote in her 25-page ruling.
Therefore, according to the judge, the 1877 law violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.
"We are ecstatic that the court found in our favor and struck down this racially discriminatory law that has been arbitrarily enforced over time," Action NC executive director Pat McCoy said in a statement. "We will now be able to help more people become civically engaged without fear of prosecution for innocent mistakes. Democracy truly won today!"
Voting rights tracker Democracy Docket noted that Monday's ruling "does not have any bearing on North Carolina's strict felony disenfranchisement law, which denies the right to vote for those with felony convictions who remain on probation, parole, or a suspended sentence—often leaving individuals without voting rights for many years after release from incarceration."
However, Mitchell Brown, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, said that "Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to reengage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
"It also makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society, specifically Black voters who were the target of this law," Brown added.
North Carolina officials have not said whether they will appeal Biggs' ruling. The state Department of Justice said it was reviewing the decision.
According to Forward Justice—a nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. South, "Although Black people constitute 21% of the voting-age population in North Carolina, they represent 42% of the people disenfranchised while on probation, parole, or post-release supervision."
The group notes that in 44 North Carolina counties, "the disenfranchisement rate for Black people is more than three times the rate of the white population."
"Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to re-engage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
In what one civil rights leader called "the largest expansion of voting rights in this state since the 1965 Voting Rights Act," a three-judge state court panel voted 2-1 in 2021 to restore voting rights to approximately 55,000 formerly incarcerated felons. The decision made North Carolina the only Southern state to automatically restore former felons' voting rights.
Republican state legislators appealed that ruling to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which in 2022 granted their request for a stay—but only temporarily, as the court allowed a previous injunction against any felony disenfranchisement based on fees or fines to stand.
However, last April the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the three-judge panel decision, stripping voting rights from thousands of North Carolinians previously convicted of felonies. Dissenting Justice Anita Earls opined that "the majority's decision in this case will one day be repudiated on two grounds."
"First, because it seeks to justify the denial of a basic human right to citizens and thereby perpetuates a vestige of slavery, and second, because the majority violates a basic tenant of appellate review by ignoring the facts as found by the trial court and substituting its own," she wrote.
As similar battles play out in other states, Democratic U.S. lawmakers led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont in December introduced legislation to end former felon disenfranchisement in federal elections and guarantee incarcerated people the right to vote.
Currently, only Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia allow all incarcerated people to vote behind bars.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular