Relatives of missing people in Chechnya held a meeting in Grozny

On November, 29, women relatives of missing citizens of Chechen Republic held an action in Grozny in which over 30 women took part. The participants adopted an appeal to the community asking for help in search of their kidnapped or missing relations.

The meeting of protest passed off in Journalists' public garden, in Druzhbi Narodov square. The participants were holding photos of their missing relatives and posters with a demand to return their sons.

"Like in any other places where there have been wars a great many people got missing in Chechnya, most of them men. Therefore many families remained without breadwinners, thousands of children became orphans. This day is a symbol of all the sacred things on Earth - the Mother's Day. On this sacred day we wish to draw everyone's attention to our problem. We appeal to civil society to help stop the Chechen women's suffering. We call for all those who can help in any possible way to provide us with any kind of information which will assist us in our search", the participants' appeal to the civil society runs.

The leader of one of the local NGOs who wished to remain anonymous expressed the opinion that no one knew the exact number of kidnapped and missing residents in Chechnya.

"According to official data, there are over five thousand missing people but in reality there may be much more of them because during the first years of the counter-terrorist operation the citizens could not submit statements on kidnapping of disappearance of a person", the interlocutor of "Caucasian Knot" says.

Relatives of the gunmen captured during special operations by the personnel of law enforcement bodies also preferred not to appeal to prosecutor's office out of fear for their own safety.

Our source thinks that most of those who are considered as missing today since the moment of establishing CTO are hardly alive.

"I think the authorities must tell the truth to the missing people's relatives at last for them not to cherish vain hopes. For many years there have been rumors in Chechnya that the young people captured during "mop-ups" were being kept in secret prisons, maybe even in the Far East, or they were serving their penalty terms under fictional names", the human rights activist says.

According to him, nothing has been done in fact at the level of the republican authorities for the last ten years. "This problem will have to be solved one day", our interlocutor emphasizes.