Replies

[For years, I have studied this communist plan, it is how they manage a country and now I wonder what is in store for us?

They did this to several countries, the stories are horrendous,
the real citizens are moved out and Russians move in, then when they say they are having an election and the citizens voted for the communist plan, it is true, the Russians did.

We have seen the ‘moved in’ crowd here already, what next?

Obama is following the Venezuela plan now, what next?
granny]

AKHMED ZAKAEV IN THE SEMINAR “CHECHNYA: THE FORGOTTEN WAR” AT ROYAL
SOCIETY OF ARTS, LONDON

February, 19th 2009.

World Chechnya Day.

Monday marks one of the bloodiest and most brutal pages in the whole
history of Russo-Chechen relations. On that day, 65 years ago, the whole
Chechen nation of half a million people was exiled from their home land
and deported to Central Asia and Kazakhstan - indeed my own family were
among them.

As is well documented the pain of the losses that Chechens suffered in
that distant past did not become the last pain they were to encounter,
and sadly the struggle continues into our tragic present. It is true
that the tactics deployed by the Kremlin today are more subtle, but the
outcome is the same in that the displacement and persecution of Chechens
continues via methods that are less obvious but equally as brutal.

On that day, in a cold February morning of 1944, several hundred
thousands of Chechens were being loaded into cattle trains to be
transported to the far away steppes of Kazakhstan . That was a scary
road to nowhere.

Only one half of the nation would reach the destination, the rest would
be left lying along the rails, the road of Death, sprinkled with snow.
Tens of thousands were shot or burnt to death because there was no way
to transport them.

A horrible reminder of those days is a village called Haibach, the whole
population of which, 700 people in all, was burnt alive.

In the thirteen years of deportation hundreds of thousands of elderly,
women and children died in a strange land. Such was a result of the
claim that the whole Chechen nation was a traitor to the Russian
Communist regime.

Thousands of broken lives, never-ending tears of families, hundreds of
thousands of nameless graves in the steppes of Central Asia and Kazakhstan.

On January 26, 2004 the European Union officially recognised the
deportation of the Chechen people as an act of genocide.

Grave crimes were committed against defenceless old people, women and
children. Hundreds of thousands dead, mass extra-judicial executions,
torture in concentration camps, abductions and disappearances of people,
kidnappings and the list goes on.

Today Russia continues to violate international law on human rights and
does everything in its power to stifle Chechnya’s legitimate claim for
independence. Claims that peace and stability has returned to the region
are just a guise to legitimize occupant’s regime of fear and oppression.

When I reflect on what happened 65 years ago, the brutality of war and
struggle of the Chechen people that continues, I still believe that the
law and historical justice are on the side of the Chechen nation. They
just have to be.

The violence and blood that Russia spills at home and abroad
demonstrates its disregard for moral and legal responsibilities in full
view of the international community. What deeply saddens and frustrates
me is the lack of political will to do something about it. I am deeply
convinced that economic interests of certain countries and political
careers of certain politicians should not be seen as more important than
the fate of a million people nation. More than 250 thousand of innocent
victims amongst the civilians, 40 thousand of them children, serve as a
sufficient ground to initiate a war tribunal against Russian war
criminals. The fact that Russia owns nuclear weapons and can therefore
blackmail the international community should not prevent us from
bringing Russian war criminals to trial.

I also think it is my duty to remind you that the illusions some
political circles have about Russia ’s democratic progress are fatally
dangerous for the whole mankind. Clearly, the world needs to find a way
to make Russia comply with the basic principles of human rights, freedom
of speech and the rule of law. It will be at your peril that the West
deludes itself into believing that they just do things differently.

The way Russia silences critics living on foreign soil is starkly
illustrated in the killing of the former ChRI President Zelimkhan
Yandarbiev; the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the murder in Istambul
of the ChRI citizen Islam Djanibekov and most recently, the fatal
shooting in Vienna of Umar Israilov.

The ChRI Government, my Government, voices its strongest objection to
the European Union’s lack of a clearly defined position in relation to
the Russian Federation’ aggression against the Chechen Republic of
Ichkeriya, crimes against humanity and absence of an effective system to
protect the ChRI citizens who have found asylum in European countries.

We are counting on the Austrian authorities who had offered political
asylum to Umar Ismailov and his family and who guaranteed his security
while resident on the Austrian soil, to do everything they can to bring
to justice both the perpetrators of this crime and their paymasters,
whoever they might be.

Despite this bleak backdrop I remain an optimist that things can change
– there really is no alternative. We need to bring about a new dialogue
with Russia and begin a more constructive phase in relations to build
stability in the whole of the Caucasus. And as for Chechnya
specifically, my own view is that Peace and human rights can only be
achieved if the Chechen’s right to self-determination is recognised
through free and fair elections.

I would like to leave you with one final thought. This week is a year
since Kosovo was granted independence. There has been no regional
destabilization as many predicted which shows that a small independent
state can viably survive in modern Europe . I invite you to draw your
own conclusions on what can be achieved if the political will exists.

Thank you.

http://www.chechenpress.co.uk/content/2009/02/23/main02.shtml

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