On this day in 1944 Stalin obliterated the nations of Chechnya and Ingushetia and started the deportation of their entire populations from their homeland to perish in labor camps, gulags, in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Operation “Lentil” was carried out by 100,000 Soviet soldiers and 19,000 officers.

A few days later, on 29 February, Lavrentiy Beria, the notorious chief of the Soviet security and secret police sent the following telegram to the Kremlin:

“I report the results of the operation of resettling Chechens and Ingush. The resettlement began 23 February in the majority of districts, with the exception of high mountain settlements. By today 478,479 persons, including 91,250 Ingush, were evicted and loaded onto special railway cars. 180 special trains were loaded, of which 159 were sent to a designated place.”

The mountain village of Khaibakh at the heart of Chechnya came to symbolize Russia’s policy of genocide. All its 700 inhabitants, including pregnant women, centenarians and toddlers were driven into a large stable and burnt alive. Those trying to escape were shot.

The NKVD officer in charge, Colonel Mikhail Gveshiani, sent this telegram to Beria:

“For your eyes only. Given the impossibility of transportation and in order to complete Operation Mountains on schedule I was obliged to liquidate the over 700 residents of village Khaibakh.”

He received a prompt reply:

“Following your resolute action while resettling Chechens in the Khaibakh area you have been proposed for a state distinction with promotion.
Congratulations.
L.P. Beria.”

It is estimated that half the Chechen people who were deported either perished during transportation or thanks to the extreme conditions in exile. This heinous crime against humanity was characterized as GENOCIDE by the European Parliament 60 years later – in February 2004.

Stalin died in 1953, and in 1956, at the famous 20th Communist Party Congress, Nikita Khrushchev was outspoken in criticising the crimes against the Soviet people during the Stalin years. He rehabilitated the Chechen-Ingush nation and allowed its people to return as of 1957.

In 1994, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia again sent its army into war against Chechnya, a tiny mountainous republic in the Northern Caucasus with just one million inhabitants. They lost the war and had to pull out in 1996, forcing Russian president Yeltsin to sign a peace treaty with Chechen president Maskadov in May 1997. Yet Russia again went to war on Chechnya in autumn 1999 under its new prime minister, later president, and now prime minister again: Vladimir Putin.

This war has never ended.

During the first war of 1994 and the subsequent war that I and many others believe is still being waged against Chechnya another quarter of a million people have died, 40,000 of them children. It is clearly the greatest war crime in Europe since World War Two.

Russian policy in the Northern Caucasus is a complete failure. Vladimir Putin has given carte blanche to the thug Ramzan Kadyrov and his henchmen to rove the region unchecked. The result has been regular disappearances, torture and extra judicial killings – a regime of fear and oppression. Freedom of expression does not exist, political opposition is unknown. Unemployment is running at 70 per cent and the society is in tatters. Russian leaders have through autocracy and suppression of democracy and rule of law finally undermined their own position - and violence, extremism and terror are spiraling out of control as a result.

This situation was well described in the Council of Europe’s damning report on human rights in Chechnya, the so-called Dick Marty report, which was unanimously adopted by its Parliamentary Assembly in June last year. A similar resolution, also very strong in its tone, was passed in the European Parliament last October.

The Council of Europe and the European Parliament, having made such accurate observations of human rights and legal matters in Russia, should now come together and translate this identification into real political pressure towards Russia, and force its compliance to the European Convention of Human Rights and to democratic and civilized values. What the Northern Caucasus needs desperately is to rid itself of Russian tyranny and claim self determination and its right to an independent government through properly monitored free and fair elections.

There is no time to waste, act now.

Ivar Amundsen
Director, Chechnya Peace Forum

ChechenCenter.info