…AS DOES AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Amnesty International (AI) has also weighed in on the situation in Chechnya. In a report timed to coincide with the European Union-Russia summit, which was postponed earlier this month and is now scheduled for November 25, AI put together “detailed testimonies” showing how victims of rights violations in Chechnya who complain to European institutions have been killed or “disappeared.” According to an AI press release put out on November 9, human rights defenders in Chechnya have been killed and tortured, with “many more” having been harassed or intimidated. Evidence suggests they were “targeted by agents of the state in order to silence them,” the group reported.

In particular, Chechens who have gone to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for rights violations have been “the subject of reprisals ranging from harassment and threats, to the killing of applicants themselves or their close relatives,” AI stated in its press release. “One applicant to the European Court of Human Rights appealing over the ‘disappearance’ of his son during a military raid has had his other son killed after lodging his case. Another man appealing over the ‘disappearance’ of his brother, has himself ‘disappeared’ since lodging his case with the Court.”