DISPERSAL OF WOMEN'S MEETING IN GROZNY
by Sultan Abubakarov

June 7, 2004 – ( HRVC) A large group of Chechen women (from 150 to 200 people, according to some reports) staged an action of protest at the complex of government buildings in Grozny on June 2. The women demanded that the authorities impart the whereabouts of their relatives and intimates who were abducted by officers of different security agencies and disappeared during so called "purges". However, as one of the women who took part in the action reported, a high-ranking official of the interior ministry who came out to see the protesters demanded that they immediately break up and addressed the women standing close to him with the words, "I remember everyone, we will look into it later!"

This statement produced a wave of the women's indignation. They started throwing stones and everything that was in their way at the guard of the building. They managed to break through the cordons and approach the Government House. After it, military men and the guard of the building dispersed them. Women who took part in the action say that officers of security agencies beat them using butts of their automatic rifles and legs and continuously fired in the air. They chased the women running away for several hundreds of meters not stopping mercilessly beating them. It was a pure chance that the meeting at the Government House in Grozny did not end with victims.

The mass protest action was caused by human rights activist Kheda Saratova's TV appearance. Speaking to the local television in the evening of June 1, she stated she had lists of 1,500 residents of the republic detained by the military and kept in prisons on the territory of Russia. Ms Saratova offered relatives and friends of the missing to gather on Bogdana Khmelnitskogo Street in the Leninsky district of the Chechen capital the next day and familiarize themselves with the lists she had. It is a known fact that mainly women search for missing relatives. They start arriving in Grozny from different Chechen districts early in the morning on June 2. But Kheda Saratova did not come to the scene. And the lists of the missing were posted up on the gates leading to the television building. There were about 400-500 names on the lists. The published lists were old, according to some reports. Then someone among the women offered to hold a picket at the Government House.

Speaking to the local television, Secretary of the Chechen Security Council Rudnik Dudayev said the authorities had had grounds to disperse the meeting in the center of Grozny. "The crowd was aggressive. And the authorities showed firmness taking into account the fact that there may have been people with arms, which they brought with them to use in case the crowd broke through to the protected territory," he said.

No contact with Kheda Saratova, the human rights activist who, as believed by many Grozny residents, voluntarily or not incited the women to hold this action, has been established so far.

From: http://www.hrvc.net/news2004/7-6-04.html