The Circle of Injustice

Security operations and human rights violations in Ingushetia

Map or Ingushetia and its position in the region

PREFACE

Today, the situation in the North Caucasus remains deeply unstable. Armed groups continue to operate and carry out attacks – on both law enforcement structures and civilian targets – in Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. The suicide bombing of Domodedovo airport in January 2011 showed that targets deep inside Russia continue to be well within reach of armed groups based in the North Caucasus. The burnt-out skeleton of the old City Police Station in the centre of Nazran, the site of a suicide bomb attack on 17 August 2009 in which 24 police officers died, is a vivid reminder of the dangers that law enforcement officials in particular face.

In recent years, the Russian authorities have tried to diversify their approaches to the threats posed by armed groups by using non-military methods alongside security operations.¹ Significant funds have been invested in the region – especially in Chechnya – in an effort to stimulate growth and counter some of the socio-economic factors driving the activity of armed groups. A greater, if variable, emphasis has also been placed in some republics on dialogue. Attempts have, nominally at least, been made to reach out to, and reintegrate, members of armed groups. These measures have not been without their successes, nor their critics. However, the law enforcement response, which is the sole subject of this report, has remained crude. It continues to be conducted with scant regard for the rule of law and result in widespread human rights violations. Far from effectively tackling the threat of armed groups and the serious crimes they are committing, a strong argument can be made that they are, in fact, perpetuating them. For many in the North Caucasus, the security threat comes as much from the activities of the many law enforcement agencies that operate out of - and beyond – control, as they do from armed groups. This situation is far from conducive to the long-term resolution of the region’s instability.

This report examines the human rights violations – and the policies and practices that generate them – in Ingushetia. Ingushetia is not the most troubled region in the North Caucasus. Indeed, there have been some moderate improvements over the last few years. Amnesty International has chosen to focus on this region not because of the scale of the violations taking place there, but because the structural failings observable in Ingushetia are typical of those that affect the North Caucasus as a whole. It is, also, a region in which human rights violations have been well documented and in which, to the credit of its local leadership, local, national and international human rights organisations can operate with some freedom. Thus, while this report draws its examples from the situation in Ingushetia, its real subject is more general – namely, the policies, structures and practices that perpetuate human rights violations across the North Caucasus as a whole.

The range of serious human rights violations occurring in Ingushetia is also typical of the broader North Caucasus. These continue to be what they have long been – enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, unlawful detentions, torture and other ill-treatment and – on top of, and following these – the almost complete impossibility of redress. For the victims of these abuses, and the families who have lost their loved ones, the immense suffering caused is compounded by this absence of justice.

Indeed, impunity for the human rights violations taking place in the North Caucasus is so far the norm as to be an integral feature of the law enforcement system. This impunity is not, simply, the cumulative effect of a series of objective, unwilled obstacles to establishing the truth or bringing successful prosecutions – though these are many. It is the founding premise and original sin upon which the entire system of law enforcement in the North Caucasus is built, and there does not appear to be the necessary political will in Moscow to end it.

Until this changes, there can be no peace and no lasting stability in the North Caucasus. Undoubtedly, the Russian authorities have a clear obligation to combat the threat that armed groups pose to the life and security of all those within its territory. This obligation must, however, be fulfilled within the rule of law and with full respect for human rights. Achieving this requires a comprehensive overhaul of how the many different security forces in the North Caucasus operate - and cooperate - and, crucially, how they are held accountable. It requires the circle of injustice to be broken.