'New Stage' of Fear For Chechen Women

[acmavm]

Russian Forces Suspected in Abductions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43296-2004Oct18.html?referrer=email


By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 19, 2004; Page A12

ARGUN, Russia -- Just before sunrise one morning this month, a dozen armed men in camouflage uniforms and black masks burst into the house of Zalpa Mintayeva, shouting, "Do you have a man at home?"

The men were all dead, Mintayeva answered, according to her daughters. So the intruders grabbed her instead, beating her daughters with their rifle butts and threatening to shoot anyone who interfered. They stuffed Mintayeva into a vehicle and sped away.

For years, Russian troops have stormed into homes in Chechnya in the middle of the night to seize young men they say are separatist fighters; often the men were tortured, killed or simply disappeared. But as Chechen guerrillas increasingly recruit female suicide bombers such as the ones who blew up two planes in August and helped seize a school in Beslan last month, Russian forces are sweeping through Chechnya abducting women from their homes as well, according to residents and human rights investigators.

The disappearance of women in Chechnya offers insight into both the roots and the consequences of the Beslan school siege, in which more than 330 people were killed. When the first "black widows," as the Russians termed the female bombers, appeared on the scene two years ago, they were described as women avenging the deaths of their men. Now Russians seem to be taking revenge for the attacks of the avengers.

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In the two wars of the past decade, an estimated 100,000 people have died in Chechnya. Russian forces have carpet-bombed Grozny with more tons of munitions than any European city has endured since World War II.
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[ck4829]

1. I have heard that the Russians have terrorized the Chechens and...

It goes both ways.

This of course does not justify Chechen terrorism in any way. But, we will never hear from the 'Liberal' Media that the Russians have also been brutal and have terrorized the Chechen people.

Perhaps that is why they are separatists.