HRW: houses are burnt down again in Chechnya

The international organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented two new cases two new cases in Chechnya in which the homes of families related to suspected insurgents were torched by local law-enforcement officials as well as a public extrajudicial killing of a man suspected of providing food to insurgents.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that about two weeks ago, on July 2, the Human Rights Watch held a press conference in Moscow, dated to publication of the report entitled "What Your Children Do Will Touch Upon You: Punitive House-Burning in Chechnya". The authors had stated that despite the official termination of the counterterrorist operation Chechnya continues violating human tights.

HRW representatives stated on July 14 that Russian federal and Chechen local authorities should immediately put a stop to the punitive house-burning and other human rights violations in Chechnya and bring those responsible to justice.

"We have two more houses burned and at least one person killed just in the last couple of weeks," said Tanya Lokshina, deputy Moscow director at Human Rights Watch.

The two new cases of punitive house burnings documented by Human Rights Watch took place on June 29 and July 4, after the Kremlin gave Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov, authority to run counterinsurgency operations outside Chechnya, in neighbouring Ingushetia. In one case, a daughter of the family, who reportedly had married a Chechen rebel, died under suspicious circumstances. The extrajudicial killing, supposedly of a man accused of selling food to the rebels, took place on July 7.