ASF Archive Documents

ASF Archive Documents

Appeal by LAM: Stop the Genocide in Chechnya

To:
The United Nations Security Council
The United States Congress
The U.S. State Department
All people of good will
.

Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, and with the silent support of the international community, the Russian army is conducting a military campaign of inhuman cruelty against the Chechen people, a campaign that can only be described as genocide. The events in the city of Grozny over the past few days demonstrate the brutality of the campaign: a mass attack against unarmed Chechen young men in the main marketplace, the barbaric shelling of the university and of primary school #8, which resulted in the death or injury of dozens of children.

Everyone in Chechnya knows now exactly why the Russian army came - it came to destroy, to kill, to steal and to oppress the Chechen people.

Russian soldiers, drunken and demoralized, have lost their sanity and their humanity. Murder of innocent civilians, buying and selling people, marauding, bombing apartments and committing arson have become everyday activities. Most of the crime in Grozny and in other cities is committed by drunk Russian soldiers - usually murder of other soldiers and various acts of provocation.

It is very clear from all of this that the Russian army is in no way capable of bringing order and peace to Chechnya.

The world can no longer watch with indifference as one of the oldest peoples of Europe is massacred before its eyes. The world can no longer accept the lie that this genocide is a battle against terrorism. The international community must demand that the Russian government and the Maskhadov administration use political means to end the war. Most importantly, the international community must use all possible means of pressure to make Russia stop the genocide.

LAM Center, Grozny/Nazran