Chechen Committee of National Salvation faces closure

We call your attention to the press release issued by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) on 23 September 2004:

The Chechen Committee of National Salvation (ChCNS), a human rights NGO member of the All Russian Movement for Human Rights network, faces closure by the authorities of Ingushetia.

The organization, headed by Ruslan Badalov, is based and legally registered in Nazran, Ingushetia. It is active in gathering and disseminating information on the human rights situation in and around Chechnya, primarily via regular press-releases on the Internet.

In August 2004, the prosecutor's office of Ingushetia made a submission to the Nazran district court, claiming that the ChCNS disseminates information of extremist character, thus violating Article 13 of the Federal Law "On Countering Extremist Activities." In its submission, the prosecutor's office specifically referred to twelve press-releases by the ChCNS and affirmed that they featured unverified data and/or erroneous, over-generalized conclusions with the aim of accusing the Russian armed forces and law-enforcement bodies of mass-crimes. The prosecutor's office further claimed that in this way the ChCNS was purposefully inciting public hostility toward representatives of the State and attempting to make the population resist the State. The prosecutor's office requested that a court hearing be scheduled to have the press-releases examined and recognized as "extremist."

As part of his defense, Ruslan Badalov asked for an opinion by the Independent Council of Legal Expertise (a renown group of prominent Russian lawyers), who found all twelve press releases of the ChCNS to be free of extremist contents. The IHF also refutes the merits of the prosecutor's office assessments, which declare as extremist and groundless various passages of the ChCNS press-releases, including for example the following sentence: "in the opinion of the local residents, those people had become victims of the terror conducted by the Russian power structures". (Press release no. 550, "Five Corpses Found in the Leninsky District of Grozny", 1 April 2004).

The court hearing was scheduled for the first week of September but had to be postponed until 24 September due to the illness of Ruslan Badalov. The IHF fears that if the Court rules that the ChCNS press-releases constitute extremist materials, the activities of the organization risk being considered as extremist under the Federal Law "On Countering Extremist Activities", leading to a warning and to the possible suspension without trial of their activities for a period of up to six months. Under the same law, the Prosecutor's office or the Ministry of Justice can request a Court ruling to close down the organization.

The IHF has serious grounds to believe that the ChCNS is being prosecuted for its independent reporting on human rights violations committed by the Russian armed forces actions in Chechnya. It is feared that the Russian law "On Countering Extremist Activities", which was criticized by the UN Human Rights Committee in 2003 for its potential for selective application against non-extremist organizations, is being used in order to suspend the work of one of the strongest human rights groups in the North Caucasus.