Bulletin
"Women and children: right to life"
Content
Preface. Taisa Isaeva, Head of the Project, Director of CNGO Informational Center
Nurdi Nukhadzhiev, Ombudsman of the Chechen Republic
Israpil Shaovkhalov, the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine “Dosh” (The Word)
Musa Akhmadov, Chechen writer, publicist, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine “Vainakh”
Roza Satueva, correspondent of the newspaper “Voice of the Chechen Republic”
Natalya Estemirova, employee of ‘Memorial’
Usam Baisaev, member of HR center “Memorial”
Satsita Israilova, director of Grozny central library
Abubakar Amirov, resident of Staropromislovski district of Grozny
Dik Altemirov, Human rights activist and community worker
Vakha Ibalayev, resident of the former village Kharsenoi
Lula Kuni (Lula Zhumalaeva),
poetess, translator and Editor-in-Chief of the magazine “Nana” (“Mother”)
Pharisees. Fiscals. Philistines.
Everything will pass and will be in the vanity.
In the morning dogs-hyenas bowled along
someone’s cranium with a temporal hole…
I am a Chechen of 46 years old. I am a mother of two children. I have got a great number of fragment wounds (one of them stuck near the heart). During all three military campaigns (there were three of them, not two as our high officials assert) it happened that I was “stuck” for a quite long time in the city – in the very epicenter of the military events.
What have I seen? What have I experienced? What can a woman with two young children on arms experience when she found herself on the fire line between two fighting sides? Death is not so frightful. Quite soon you start perceiving it as an unavoidable physiological fact. It is more terrible to wait for it, to realize that your death will be the cause of starvation of your children. Helplessness itself is awful, when each cell of your being, of your “skin” feels Death’s breathing behind you. After the war in our street (or rather, on overgrown outskirts) the entire families of pheasants were living quietly in the ruins of the buildings, rabbits were jumping, fussy squirrels were running about in the crowns of the trees. But none of us, living in these ruins had ever thought about killing of any rabbit or pheasant (though the time was scanty) – no one could bring himself to kill a living being. Every of us lived for a long time in status of an exhausted victim. Everyone clearly felt the death-horror of the notorious “lamb to be killed” which is doomed to die. Violence… I had never - neither before nor after these long years of long, extended nightmare –experienced so much humiliation. I had never - neither before, nor after these events - suspected that the human being could undergo and become a witness of such a cruel treatment of notorious “person with gun” towards those who due to the circumstances or due to the convictions does not have this “gun”.
August 1996. We were – the only survived residents of unlucky Moskovski-street – in the middle of the circle. The federals knowing perfectly well that there were only peaceful citizens in the street (they combed it out the day before) opened a heavy fire at the private sector. During seven hours (until late night) my husband and I together with the children had to hide in a pit protecting the kids with our bodies. Before that during 24 hours we were sitting in the building, which was shot through, having no possibility to hide anywhere (our house was completely destroyed, and we were occupying someone’s house). In two days we gathered in the basement of kvass workshop hiding from the heavy fire. Roar was shaking the concrete walls. A fire was raging outside of our shelter. And at this moment on the threshold of the basement a boy of 15 – 16 years old with a gun in the hand appeared. Until the last days I will remember his eyes – eyes of the teenager who saw a Death’s stare. The war called for him – a young boy, but no one had explained to him, to inexperienced boy how horrible is the Face of it – the Mask of Death with dead empty eye-pits. He came from the Hell to the world of the people. He came to the Life. To the warmth.
- Mister, - let me come in, - he whispered with his dead lips to the old man who was standing at the threshold. He was burning with shame for himself and with horror before of Her who was waiting for him behind the walls of this small lively world.
- You have a gun. Leave it behind the threshold. Here are only children and weak women, replied the one to whom he approached.
- Let me in, - more quietly repeated the boy.
- I said – leave the gun behind the threshold. If someone will notice weapon, everyone will be killed.
He quietly looked at us last time and left.
Next day the men found the body of the boy in Sunzha-river, near its bank. He was lying flat on his back. His glance was cast heavenward. In his hands there was an old double-barreled gun.
I had two neighbors. A mother and a daughter. It happens in any family that there are close relations between two family members but not among all of them. That was the case in this family. Khava’s (the name of the woman) favorite one was her elder daughter Tamara. Khava was a handsome and majestic woman. She was not healthy. Her daughter was her nurse and confidant. Tomochka worked as a teacher at the school. They both were killed on those days. Almost simultaneously. They left the basement to feed their family. Several seconds before death reached her, the mother saw death of her daughter. The federals noticed movement in the yard and opened a mortar fire. Toma was killed immediately. When mother saw her blood-stained daughter with open head wound, Khava extorted a scream. The Fate was apparently gracious to her, and she died because of the second explosion – straight after her daughter’s death. It was obvious that she would not be able to live without her daughter. Their bodies were put in the yard. It was not possible either bury them or carry out any traditional rituals. Taking risk the men covered them somehow with boards. In two days when time was found to take their bodies out, it was revealed that dogs had already started eating their bodies. Old women washed them, removing mortis worms. They were wrapped into cerement and buried in the patrimonial cemetery.
When I was young I worked at school ¹ 33. Among my pupils there were brothers Kantaevs. Cheerful and bright guys. Leaders in all school activities. Especially the youngest one – red and tall – he was the favorite of the whole school. They were – in the first military campaign during sweep operation – beaten within an inch of their life by federals and thrown to the basement. Then they were burnt out. They were burnt out alive. Only later when the soldiers left the neighbors found them. They were lying clasped in each other’s arms. The youngest – he was bigger – hugged – or covered as he could - the elder brother. They were just buried together.
Such a quiet and pure girl was Malkan. She was my cousin’s friend. She often visited us (we lived next to each other). In the first campaign one of her brothers who lived in Moscow came to Grozny and stayed in the parents’ house protecting it from looters. Federals – regular soldiers who were tired of the war and eternal homeless - used to visit him. He fed them with residuary food. Adult, he felt sorry for them and realized the stress they had because of this war.
Once the soldiers warned him that they would be replaced by mercenaries and it would be better for him to leave the house. He reacted calmly on this warning reasoning that he was a peaceful person and he had nothing to do with these events.
Several days passed. The second brother of Malkan arrived in Grozny – to visit his relatives and if possible, to take them away. In the morning he went to the parents’ house to see his brother. He promised to be back by lunch time. It was getting darker. The brother was not coming back. Malkan decided to go to their house worrying about her brother. There was an armored personnel carrier next to their house. She ran into the house. That was the last time when she was seen alive. The neighbors heard sounds of strife, screams, groans, and woman’s wail. In two hours the armored carrier left. Neighbors – the old people who stayed in the half empty street - went to the house and saw a terrible picture. There were pieces of partitioned bodies on the floor and on the sofa.
I often had to confront - in accordance with the circumstances and by virtue of “chemistry of a soul” – with representatives of federal forces. Rarely this meeting ended “peacefully”, without any incidents. August 1996. A group of 13-15 years old Chechen teenagers were detained while leaving Grozny due to the reason that they had no passports. There were several women of us who happened to be witnesses of it. We started arguing with them and became “alive shield” between children and soldiers. The result of it was: we learned a lot about ourselves and our parents in the seventh degree. It is what relates to the verbal insulting. As for the rest: I was beaten with rifle butt, my spine was broken off and my liver was hit (for a long period I had been consulting with traumatologist) because I was the most talkative person. The other seven women received different injuries.
Year of 2001. An old, shriveled from grief woman whom I met in a micro-bus on the way from Chechnya to Ingushetia. She was coming back from Chernokozovo where she tried to find her 15-years-old youngest son who was taken away by people dressed in camouflage uniform and face-mask at night time. These people drove cars with puttied plate numbers. When she tried to “get through” to the prison’s authorities she was beaten up with the rifle butt – I saw big hematomas on her dried chest when we were trying to recover her from a fainting fit: suddenly she felt bad in the car. First she started vomiting. Then she quietly lost consciousness. I saw women from Katar-Yurt village who were coming back from the funeral. They had seen a lot during the long years of the war, and now they were disconsolately crying recalling Zarema (at least that’s how they called her). This woman pulling through the war came to their village from the city. She had two children – a boy and a girl. During the infamous bombardment of Katar-Yurt she closed her children embracing them from a swarm of whistling fragments. Women who were washing her body could not help weeping when they were recalling that nothing was left from her arms... Her children survived.
In August 1996, bursting our way through the circle, together with my husband and little children (after the events described previously) we reached Sadovaya-street. Entering the house of our acquaintances we stuck here for the night as the fighting had started in this part of the city. It is still very difficult to recall everything what we had to pass through (those who had just escaped from the hell). The house where we had to wait until the end of the fighting (and the bombardments in the night time) was, by the irony of fate, just on the fire line: one side of the uncompleted building was occupied by fighters while the other side of the neighboring building was taken by the federals. It is a fundamental truth that the soldiers opened fire at everything that was moving. It happened on Moskaovskaya-street as well when I came out of the pit using the break of the fighting (while the field guns were overcharged) and ran to the crowd which was escaping in panic. I wanted to warn someone about our whereabouts just in case if my husband and me would be killed with stray shell, so they could take our children. Sniper who was on the second floor of the former kindergarten no.1 (behind our house) “played” shooting under my feet the whole way while I was running towards the neighbors. The same happened here. Recalling that a baby carriage (my youngest daughter was sleeping in it the last days) was left in the yard next to the car of the owners of the house I ran out to get it. A soldier who found position on the fence took aim at me and gave a squirt. Either he failed or God saved me but I managed to fall on the ground. Bullets hit through the door from top to bottom in several centimeters from me. There was a moment when we were put to the wall. The fighting moved to our yard. One of the soldiers was contused. Someone lost his leg. Sitting in the basement we heard how soldiers were asking the neighbor about the tenants of the house. A Russian woman replied that “Chechens live here, they did not leave. They are with their children”. She noticed “they have great lot of boys”. In three minutes the door of the basement burst open. At the moment when we were hiding our children and saying good-buy to each other, a lieutenant appeared at the door opening. He ordered to hang up. There was blood on the asphalt of the yard. Death rattle of two young fighters who were in agony. Groans and swears of a wounded soldier. Sound of the fixed breech-mechanism. Drawn with anger faces of sweaty soldiers. Five children which we hided behind us. A pregnant – the last month – young wife of the owner (the husband shielded her). And the youngest girl who was trying to push her head out and move aside my hand naively thinking that it was a game. This picture is still arising in my mind.
By virtue of my work’s specifics I have to meet dozens of people every day. Not finding any understanding among high officials (these endless bureaucratic “shakedown and dryings” will turn against anyone), or fearing the pomposity of officials’ thresholds, people come to journalists seeking “the truth”. They believe like in old times in the power of printer’s ink. Endless list of disappeared, perished, tortured and thrown – without court and investigation – to the prisons… More and more new details of federal’s acts of brutality in “filtration camps”... I remember that one of my acquaintances had been seeking for her brother for two long years. Once in the morning she came to me and said that there was “a place” called “filtration” and she would be helped to get into it... In the evening I visited her and did not find her at home. In a day time I was told that she died in the hospital due to the cardiac rupture and her body was taken away by her relatives who lived in the distant village. The old neighbor (she was selling cone bags in the market) wailed recalling that the poor woman was “completely white”: the young woman of 32-years-old turned grey in a flash when she saw with her own eyes everything what was happening in this hellish machines of suppression.
Many people say that it is a high time to forget everything that we need to live in the present and think about the future. May be, they are right. But the war is not over in our hearts. The fire scars of the war do not heal up. We all just were trying to pretend that everything is fine. Our wounds have skinned over with scald. But as soon as we disquiet them they start bleeding. No one deals (will any one deal with it at all?) with psychological rehabilitation of our children who still shudder because of the sound of a plane. The percentage of the people with different phobias is large, it goes off any possible scale (every third visitor of our editors office can be put diagnosis “continuous sluggish schizophrenia” due to the obvious psychological irregularity). Massive cases of suicide among girls (residents of Grozny) during the first war years – the victims of rape by soldiers during the war events (everyone knows about the sad destiny of the Chechen women convicted in “filtration” PAP-1 who became “slaves” of the federals). The ecology of the republic is in the catastrophic situation. Number of dead-born children and children with congenital deformity (term “anomaly” is too soft for it) strikes our imagination. Multiyear “conduction of constitutional order” infringed the balance between the male and the female population. Systematic annihilation of thousands of healthy capable men – fathers of families – due ethical characteristics brought to the fact that the Chechen nationality turned into “nation of widows” with all arising consequences. Women turned into a “pulling” power. It is an axiom that the whole idea of the war was contrived to destroy gene pool of the nation. Ten-year “anti-terrorist campaign” “mowed off” the pick of the nation – young boys from 15 to 25 – 30 years old. Today according to official statistics the population of the Chechen Republic comprises more than a million people. Women count about 700 000 people... No comments.
