On March 4, the first conference of Chechen refugees residing in Ingushetia was held in the Ingush village of Ordzhonokidzievskaya. The chairman of the conference's organization committee, Ruslan Budalov, noted that there are 170,000 Chechen refugees currently living in Ingushetia. The delegates to the conference... MORE

On March 7 a group of twenty-two humanitarian and human rights organizations called on U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to grant Temporary Protective Status (TPS) to Chechens living in the United States. The intention behind the awarding of this status is to prevent the forced... MORE

The March 7 issue of the newspaper Segodnya contained an interview with the former Russian minister of internal affairs, retired General Anatoly Kulikov, who is currently chairman of the subcommittee of the State Duma for legislation in the sphere of the struggle with transnational crime... MORE

In recent months," journalist Maura Reynolds concluded grimly in the March 14 issue of the Los Angeles Times, "bodies have been turning up all over separatist Chechnya. Sometimes they are found in pairs, sometimes half a dozen or more at a time. Usually the victims... MORE

In mid-March, there were a flurry of announcements in the Russian press that Russia had begun reducing the size of its military force in Chechnya. The Associated Press reported: "Russia began a series of widely televised ceremonies marking a limited withdrawal from Chechnya on March... MORE

On March 13, leading separatist field commander Shamil Basaev made public on the web-site Kavkaz.org the text of an apology, dated January 27, which he had written to U.S. aid worker Kenneth Gluck. In the letter, Basaev admitted that Gluck had been kidnapped by "a... MORE

On March 16, Saudi commandos stormed a Vnukovo Airlines jet sitting on the tarmac in Medina which had been hijacked the previous day by three knife-wielding Chechens while en route from Istanbul to Moscow. Some 162 passengers and twelve crewmembers were on board. A Russian... MORE

On March 13 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, called for an end to abuses by both sides in the fighting between Russian forces and the Chechen separatists. She referred to reports of serious human rights violations being carried out by the... MORE