04 June 2004 13:21
Council of Europe reps barred from meeting Chechen rights champions - web site
3 June: A delegation of the special rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE], Rudolf
Bindig and Andreas Gross, has been in Chechnya since yesterday, 2 June.
Meetings of the delegation with public organizations, including the Memorial human rights organization, in Dzhokhar
[Groznyy] and Nazran were planned and agreed earlier. However, the Russian representatives accompanying the rapporteurs
are successfully blocking this part of the visit's programme. Russian State Duma MP [Leonid] Slutskiy from the
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia told Andreas Gross that all the offices of Memorial were closed and that the arranged
meetings could not be conducted. At the same time, Slutskiy told right champions that the delegation was planing to meet
them in Nazran at 0730 [0330 gmt] on Wednesday morning [2 June]. He switched off his telephone after telling to wait for
instructions.
Earlier, the occupying authorities resorted to this kind of tricks with other foreign delegations as well. In the
meantime, everyone in the Memorial offices is waiting for the guests from PACE, hoping that they will be freed from
"captivity", the press service of Memorial reports.
[BBC Monitoring International Reports] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
