Appeal for international military tribunal on Chechnya

On Chechnya-sl, Norbert Strade has translated the text of a recent appeal by Akhmed Zakayev, chairman of the ChRI Cabinet of Ministers:

Appeal by the Government of the ChRI

CHECHENPRESS. Publications and Media Department. 26.09.08

CHECHENPRESS received by e-mail the following appeal by the Government of the ChRI to the EU Headquarters, the President of the General Assembly of the UN, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the International Criminal Court and leaders of democratic countries.

Ladies and gentlemen!

The Government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which is obliged to democratic values and considers human rights, the rights of nations and peoples to be fundamental achievements of civilization, addresses itself to you with the following:

- Taking into account the inhuman suffering of the Chechen people during the entire period of its history when it was under the control and influence of the Russian Empire in its different political manifestations (the USSR, the Russian Federation), such as the repeated deportations and the incessant military actions during the last 14 years, which demanded more than 200,000 lives, including 40,000 children, according to authoritative international non-governmental organizations;

- taking into account the zeal and the readiness for self-sacrifice of the Chechen people in the name of achieving freedom and independence, a convincing proof of which is the substantial support by the citizens of the ChRI for the Resistance forces, despite the fact that they thus subject themselves to terror from the side of the Russian military formations and special services;

- taking into account the numerous and unpunished war crimes committed by the occupation forces on the territory of the ChRI;

- taking into account the unquestionable right of the Chechen people to national sovereignty and independence, not only within the framework of the declarations of the United Nations "About the Rights of Nations and Peoples", but also according to the decision of April 18-20, 1990, by the supreme body of power in the USSR, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (whose legal successor is the RF), which defines an unequivocal treatment of the rights of the Autonomous Republics: "In the case of a union state leaving the USSR, an Autonomous Republic which is part of this union state has the right to determine its future independently", a statement which precisely was the justification for the Russian authorities in their decision to recognize the independent statehood of Abkhazia and South Ossetia;

- taking into account the unquestionable fact that Russia acknowledged its military aggression against the ChRI in 1994, Russia's defeat in this war and the signing on May 12, 1997 of the "Peace Agreement" between the RF and the ChRI, in which the sides determined that the peoples of the RF and the ChRI are ending their century-old conflict and that the relations between the subjects of this agreement from now on and forever will be based on international law and that the application of the armed forces will be categorically excluded from the solution of disputes;

- and finally, taking into account the existence of attempts by the RF side to take revenge for the lost war of 1994-1996, the incessant military operations and punitive actions, as a result of which thecitizens are suffering, as well as in view of the irreconcilability of the Chechen people with the conditions of the occupation, which are aggravated even more by a feeling of desperation over the absence of truth and justice with regard to the war criminals who committed war crimes in the Chechen Republic during the last 14 years, and furthermore in view of the alienation between the sides in the military conflict and the impossibility for the Chechen population to live in freedom and without fear in its historical native land, we request the creation of an international military tribunal for the Chechen Republic.

The Government of the ChRI believes that the absence of juridical and political consequences of Russia's terrorist policy in the North Caucasus only discredits the entire world system of democracy and provides totalitarian regimes with a feeling of impunity and omnipotence, visible evidence of which are Russia's latest actions against sovereign Georgia.

Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the ChRI Ahmed Zakayev

http://www.chechenpress.info/events/2008/09/25/1f.shtml