Human Rights Group’s Office Destroyed in Arson Attack
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Version 0 of 1. MOSCOW — The office of a human rights group that is investigating the practice of so-called punitive house burning in the restive Russian region of Chechnya was itself destroyed in what appeared to be an arson attack over the weekend. Under the practice, which is not condoned by Russian law but has been a part of Russian counterinsurgency operations for years, the homes of relatives of people suspected of terrorism are burned in response to major attacks. The idea is to create a deterrent against future attacks in cases in which the perpetrators have died in suicide operations. It is akin to Israeli policies of house demolition but distinct for not being approved by the government or a court. Two days after an assault on Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, on Dec. 4, in which 11 attackers and 14 police officers were killed, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s leader, said in a post on his Instagram account that relatives of people who kill police officers would be expelled from the region “without the right to return, and their houses will be razed to the ground.” In the ensuing days, a human rights group, the Committee Against Torture, documented the burning of nine homes owned by the relatives of suspects in the attack. In each case, men in unmarked uniforms showed up, asked residents to leave, started a fire in the house and prevented anybody from trying to put out the blaze. The arsonists do not identify themselves as police officers, but the police do not try to stop them, say members of human rights groups who have monitored the practice for years. “The whole thing has been happening in a legal vacuum,” said Tanya Lokshina, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Russia program. For years, human rights groups have objected to the practice. The Committee Against Torture’s director, Igor A. Kalyapin, said in an interview that he filed a request to prosecutors on Dec. 9 to open an investigation into the latest arsons. The following day, an unknown assailant pelted Mr. Kalyapin and Ms. Lokshina with eggs at a Moscow news conference announcing that filing. “First of all, it’s about collective punishment being used as a counterinsurgency tactic, and the noninterference of the Kremlin, despite the fact that this tactic is completely against Russian law and Russia’s international obligations,” Ms. Lokshina said. After the groups filed their request for an investigation, the Chechen media set about vilifying the Committee Against Torture as a group that coddles terrorists and that is at odds with the regional authorities. On Saturday, participants in a pro-government rally in Grozny held signs that said “Stop the lies of human rights defenders.” Later that evening, fire destroyed the committee’s empty office. A surveillance video showed men who were armed but without identifying insignia trying to break in, circumstances similar to the other arsons. The authorities in Chechnya have denied any connection to any of the arsons. When two researchers for the Committee Against Torture, Sergei S. Babinets and Dmitri S. Dmitriev, called the police to document the damage on Sunday, the police detained them briefly and confiscated their cellphones. Inside the charred office, somebody had written on a wall “You are defending the human rights of terrorists, but your father did not die by their hands.” Mr. Kalyapin, the group’s director, said he intended to ask Russian prosecutors to investigate the burning of his office. |