11 April 2008, 15:05
In Moscow, people commemorated the victims of "zachistka" in the Chechen village of Samashki
In the evening on April 10, a picket was held in the Pushkin Square of Moscow in memory of the victims of the "zachistka" (clean-up) committed by Russian troops in the Chechen village of Samashki on April 7 and 8, 1995, during which over one hundred residents were killed. The picket was attended by 27 persons - activists of the Anti-War Club, Human Rights Centre "Memorial" and the Committee of Anti-War Actions.
"I think that the crime was committed not only by those who killed, but also by those who had concealed the tragedy and failed to investigate it. If the massacre in Samashki had been duly investigated, we would not have had mass murders of peaceful residents accomplished by Russian militaries in Novye Aldy and Starye Promysly in 2000. Therefore, I accuse not only those who shot and murdered then, but also those who hid the data in public prosecutor's tables," picketer Natalia Estemirova, an employee of the Human Rights Centre "Memorial" in Grozny, said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
"Like practically all other criminal cases connected with military crimes in Chechnya, the investigation of the Samashki events was stopped. They found no crime attributes in the actions of the militaries," Oleg Orlov, another participant of the picket, Chairman of the HRC "Memorial" and one of the authors of the independent report on the events in Samashki in April 1995, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
Then, without delay, an independent investigation of the events in Samashki was undertaken by the Observation Mission of human rights organizations in the armed conflict zone in Chechnya, headed by former Russian Ombudsman Sergey Kovalyov. The result of its work was the report "By All Available Means..." published by the Human Rights Centre "Memorial" in 1995.
Author: Vyacheslav Feraposhkin, CK correspondent
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