Refugees from mountain villages of Chechnya fear to return home

After 1999, an incessant mass outflow of people from mountain villages of Chechnya continues. However, life conditions for them in the plain are the heaviest.

Local officials would not provide registration to people who try to escape from the war. Therefore, the so-called internally displaced persons (IDPs) live in constant fear for themselves and their homes.

The hill-men would like to return to their houses, but they cannot, since shelling still continues in the mountain areas of the Republic. Lack of safety is the major factor of permanent outflow of people from the mountain villages of Chechnya. In their turn, the military leaders deny the facts of shelling on dwelling settlements.

"These people are needed neither in their residence in the mountains, where combat operations are still on, nor in the plain, where they try to hide from the war," Svetlana Gannushkina, head of the "Civil Assistance" Committee, has told today to the press conference, where human rights defenders presented their monitoring results of the situation with Chechen mountaineers.

On December 11-13, 2006, human rights activists held an examination of the status of the residents of the mountain villages of Chechnya who had moved down to the plain during the so-called "counterterrorist operation" conducted in the Republic, that is, after the fall of 1999.

Among other events, polling was held among more than 100 families. The refugees answered three questions: human rights activists asked why the families had left their mountain villages, what their life conditions were in the plain, and about the prospects of people's return home.

According to Elena Burtina, representative of the "Civil Assistance" Committee, practically in all the cases the reason for the people to leave the mountains was violence exerted by militaries.