[Reader-list] chechenya and kashmir

[Aarti Sethi]

Dear All,

Apropos Shuddha's last post in which he mentions Anna Politskaya, the
Russian journalist who was murdered in her flat for daring to write about
the acts committed by Russian military in "cleaning" operations in Chechnya.
I am posting an article by her below. In the day to come we will be faced
with choices, either to ally ourselves with things done in our names, or to
say that we will not. At such times it would be well to remember, and not
shirk from realising, exactly what happens to bodies and minds when terror
is unleashed. We are aware that the army routinely picks up young boys for
"questioning" in Kashmir. We are aware that many of these boys never come
back, and that those who do, return broken in mind and body. We are aware
that hospitals in kashmir are overwflowing with people ill with the violence
done unto them. We know that this time too a pregnant woman was beaten by
the CRPF.

So I am qouting from her, because I think what she had to say for chechnya
is worth remembering for us in India:

"Do you still think you should be supporting this war because of some aim
that's being pursued and so things wouldn't get worse? Things cannot get
worse. We have lost all sense of the morality and restraint we were taught
in less tumultuous times, and something more vile and loathesome than we
could ever imagine has erupted from the murkiest depths of our souls. "

Let us not lose sense of our morality, our restraint. Let us not lose sight
of basic things like physicality and bodies and pain.

regards
A



http://www.tjetjenien.dk/baggrund/politkovskaya.html

Children of Chechen "Spetzoperations" by Anna Politkovskaya
Novaya Gazeta
May 19 2002

Do you still think you should be supporting the war in Chechnya because of
some aim that's being pursued, so things wouldn't get worse? We have reached
a stage in Russia now, where every schoolchild knows that Chechnya is being
"cleaned", and adults no longer bother with the inverted commas.

"Zachistka" in this sense entails thoroughly sorting out someone or
something and, on the whole, we prefer not to enquire too closely into who
or what. For this meaning of this old word we have the war in Chechnya to
thank, and more particularly the high-ranking military brass who routinely
update us on television with the latest news from Russia's Chechen ghetto,
popularly known as the "Zone of Anti- Terrorist Operations".

It is March 2002 and the thirtieth month of the second Chechen war.
"Zachistka", if we are to believe the military, is precisely the aim of the
current "special measures". From last November until now, lunatic waves of
special measures have been sweeping over Chechnya: Shali, Kurchaloy,
Tsotsan-Yurt, Bachi-Yurt, Urus-Martan, Grozny; again Shali, again Kurchaloy;
Argun again and again; Chiri-Yurt.

Towns and villages are besieged for days; women wail; families try
desperately to evacuate their adolescent sons - where to doesn't matter
providing it's a long way from Chechnya; village elders stage protest
demonstrations. Finally, we are regaled with general Moltenskoy himself, our
supposed commander-in-chief of the 'Front Against Terrorism', festooned with
medals and ribbons, there on the television screen, pumping adrenalin,
larger than life; and invariably against a background of corpses and
"cleaned" villages.

The general reports some recently achieved "significant success". But
there's still no Khattab with Basayev.... And you know full well that
something isn't right, because you went to school when you were little and
can do enough mental arithmetic to add up the numbers of enemy fighters he
claims to have caught over the past winter. It amounts to a whole regiment
of them. Just the same as in last year's warfare season.

So, how many fighters are still there? What exactly does "zachistka"
involve? What is the truth, and who is telling it? What have these special
measures actually turned into? What is their aim? Last, and most important,
what are their results?

*His eyes looked so calm*

- I was relieved when they took us out to be shot.

- Relieved? What about your parents? Didn't you think about them then, and
how sad they would be?

Mahomed Idigov, recently taken out to be shot, is 16.

He is a pupil in the tenth grade of School No 2 in the town of Starye Atagi,
Grozny region. He has a favourite pair of jeans, a much loved tape recorder,
and a stack of pop music cassettes which he enjoys listening to. He's a
typical 16-year-old. The only disturbing thing about him is his eyes, which
have the level steadiness of an adult's. They don't go with his teenager's
skin problems and adolescent gawkiness.

There something wrong, too, in the measured way Mahomed relates the story of
what was done to him. In the course of "zachistka" he was subjected to the
same electric torture as the grown men. Having themselves been tortured,
these men pleaded with Russian officers not to torture the boy but to
torture them again in his place.

- No way, was the reply. - We get good counter-terrorist information out of
schoolboys.

When I ask about his parents, Mahomed pauses for a time. His eyebrows
finally arch childishly as he tries not to cry. He manages, and replies
clearly and directly, as you can when something's over,

- Other people get killed too.

Indeed. Why should Mohamed have it easier than other people. Everybody is in
the same situation. The "zachistka" of Starye Atagi from 28 January to 5
February was the second time the town had been "cleaned" in 2002, and the
twentieth time since the beginning of the second Chechen war.

It is subjected to "special measures" nearly every month. The official
explanation is plausible: with a population of around 15,000, Starye Atagi
is one of the largest towns in Chechnya. It is 20 kilometres from Grozny and
ten from the so-called "Wolf's Gate", as Russian soldiers call the entrance
to the Argun Gorge. It is considered a trouble spot full of terrorist
wahhabites and their sympathisers.

But what has this to do with Mahomed? On the morning of 1st of February,
when the twentieth "zachistka" was at its most ferocious, masked men seized
the boy from his home in Nagornaya Street, threw him like a log into a
military truck and took him to a "filtration point", where he was tortured.

- It was very cold that day. First we were "put against the wall" for
several hours, which means you stand with your hands up and your legs apart,
facing the wall. If you try to lower your arms you get beaten immediately.
Any soldier who walks past is likely to hit you. They unbuttoned my jacket,
pulled up my sweater and cut it into strips with a knife, like a clown's
jacket.

- Why?

- Just to make me feel the cold more. They saw I was shivering.

I can't bear it. Mahomed is too dispassionate. I can't bear the calm,
thoughtful look on his face as he relates his appalling story. I wish this
child would at least cry and give me something to do. I could comfort him
then.

- Did they hit you a lot?

- All the time. On the kidneys. Then they put me on the ground and dragged
me through the mud by the neck.

- What for? Did you know why they were doing it?

- Just because. For fun.

- But were they trying to get something out of you?

- For a whole day there was nothing. They just hurt me. They took me to
interrogation in the evening. They interrogated three of us. They showed me
a list and said, "Which of these people are fighters? Where are they treated
for injuries? Who is the doctor? Whose house do they sleep at? Which of your
neighbours is feeding them?" I answered, "I don't know".

- And what did they say?

- They said, "Do you need some help?" And they tortured me with electric
current. That's what they meant by helping. They connected the wires and
turned a handle, like on a telephone. The more they turned it, the stronger
the current that passed through me. They asked me where my older brother,
"the wahhabite", was as well.

- And is he a wahhabite?

- No, of course not.

- What did you say?

- I didn't say anything.

- And what did they do?

- They passed the current through me again.

*The war has been lost*

- Did it hurt?

Mahomed's head on his thin neck slumps down below his shoulders, into his
angular knees. He does not want to answer, but it is an answer I need.

- It hurt a lot then?

- Yes, a lot.

- Is that why you were relieved when they took you out to be shot?

Mahomed is shaking as if he has a high fever. Behind him is an array of
bottles with solutions for medicine droppers, syringes, cotton wool, tubes.

- Whose is this stuff? It's for me. They damaged my kidneys and lungs.

There are a lot of people in the room, but it's as silent as if we were in
an uninhabited, sound-proof bunker. The men are completely motionless.
Somewhere outside the Idigovs' house the nightly artillery barrage is
starting, but nobody so much as stirs at its uneven booming which sounds
like the drums at a funeral.

I realise that this war, which from force of habit we still call an
'anti-terrorist operation' has been lost. It can't be continued solely for
the momentary gratification of a group of people who long ago has gone mad.
The silence is broken by Mahomed's father, Isa, a haggard man whose face is
deeply etched with suffering.

- I was wounded serving in the Soviet army. I served on Sakhalin. I know the
way things are. During the last "zachistka" they took my oldest son. They
beat him up and let him go, and I decided to send him as far away as I
could, to people I know, where he'd be safe. Was I wrong to do that? During
this "zachistka" they've crippled my middle son, Mahomed. What am I to do?
My youngest is already eleven. How long will it be before they start on him?
Not one of my sons is a gunman. They don't smoke or drink.

- How are we supposed to live? I do not know how. I only know that this is
unacceptable.

I know too how it has come about: our entire country has joined hands to
follow the lead of our great statesmen (and not only Russia, but Europe and
America too), and at the beginning of the twenty-first century we are
acquiescing without a murmur in the torture of children in a present-day
European ghetto mendaciously called a 'zone of anti-terrorist operations'.
The children of this ghetto will never forget what we have done.

*You give birth to a dead baby?*

"Zachistka" began on 28th of January. In the evening several soldiers and
armored vehicles surrounded the village. By dawn all streets were swarmed
with APC's with their ID numbers painted over with mud. Very low, as if
approaching for landing, above the village, helicopters hovered, and roof
tiles as maple leaves in the fall wind, flew from the roofs away, leaving
them uncovered. In the morning, on 29th of January, Liza Yushayeva, being in
the last month of her pregnancy, went into labour. This frequently occurs
unexpectedly and doesn't depend on the periods and parameters of
"spetzoperations" set up by General Vladimir Moltenskoy, who commands the
United Grouping in Chechnya. Liza's relatives went to ask military men, who
were standing in the nearest encompassment, to let the pregnant women pass
into the hospital, but they didin't allowed it for a long time. The women
loudly shamed them, they said, you have also mothers, wives, sisters. But
they answered that they arrived here to kill those who are alive, not to
help those who are giving birth.

As a matter of fact, it turn out, when servicemen ended their rage, this
"process" went ahead, but Liza couldn't go those 300 meters, which was the
distance to the doctor, which also was closed by troops by their
"zachistka's cell". So, they began to negotiate again, about a vehicle, and
again time passed away. Finally, Liza was brought to the hospital. But since
there, entirely other soldiers stood, they pinned down the arranged driver
and Liza to the wall - like to a fighter, who's been captured: hands up,
legs spread wide apart. Yushayeva endured "the wall" for sometime and then
she began to faint. Soon, a baby was born, but it was dead.

Do you still think you should be supporting this war because of some aim
that's being pursued and so things wouldn't get worse? Things cannot get
worse. We have lost all sense of the morality and restraint we were taught
in less tumultuous times, and something more vile and loathesome than we
could ever imagine has erupted from the murkiest depths of our souls.

- Do you deliver a dead baby, because you weren't allowed to give birth to a
live one? - point blank, like a shot, asked a woman looking into Magomed's
room.

- If you know the answer, you are still a happy person.

Anna Politkovskaya from Stariye Atagi
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