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Dondi-Yurt open air museum of Urus-Martan, Chechnya, is a private museum built by Adam Satuyev, ex-Chechen athlete.
Mister Satuyev, who had been collecting Chechen artifacts for years, decided to exhibit his collection in an open-air museum. Satuyev himself reenacted typical Chechen dwelling (residential) towers on his property in which he exposed his collection. The museum visit is free of charge.
Ikalchu is a XIV century fortress complex located in Meshi-Khi River valley, Chechnya. The gorge is heavily fortified as there are dozens of tower complexes along it.
Ikalchu is part of the Argun State History, Architecture and Nature Museum Reserve, which covers hundreds of ancient towers, settlements and fortifications in southern Chechnya. Many were destroyed during the Caucasian wars, during the Soviet deportations, and again during the 1990’s Chechen-Russian wars. Around 200 structures are still standing today (though none fully intact).
Ikalchu residential towers and fortress complex
Tower-castle complex
Watchtower
Crypts
Residential towers
Neighboring battle tower (the valley is heavily fortified)
Ikalchu residential towers from the distance
On 20 March 2000, Russian president Vladimir Putin urged Chechen fighters to take advantage of an amnesty offered by the Russian parliament. He was speaking after arriving in Chechnya by fighter jet on a surprise trip ahead of this weekend’s presidential elections.
Vladimir Putin flying a jet in Chechnya
After a brief tour of parts of the devastated capital Grozny, Mr Putin indicated that Moscow was willing to discuss the republic’s future with rebels who laid down their arms.
He said that those “who have not stained their hands with the blood of Russian nationals, have not killed or robbed, have a choice”.
A Russian pilot taken hostage several months before was freed in Komsomolskoye, a Chechen town captured by federal forces after two weeks of heavy shelling. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Zhukov had been captured in October when his jet went down in Chechnya during a mission. Zhukov was freed in Komsomolskoye on Sunday when rebels there tried to break out of a Russian encirclement. He was said to be in good physical condition.
Not much was left of Komsomolskoye village
In March of 2000 federal officials announced that 72 rebel guerrillas had surrendered at Komsomolskoye and that all were being amnestied. Two women were also among them, a Chechen woman by the name of Biluyevna Lipa (who appears in the video below) and an ethnic Russian woman who identified herself as wife of one of the Chechen hostages. Ruslan Gelayev, the commander, had escaped 2 days earlier.
The prisoners were taken to Chernokozovo filtration camp, where despite the public declaration of amnesty – they were tortured and killed. Three men survived – two disappeared (disappearances are a common phenomenon in Chechnya) and one committed suicide, according to Novaya Gazeta.
One of the survivors, Rustam Azizov, told his story to Memorial Human Rights Center before he disappeared.
War in Chechnya: a Chechen militiaman tells his story
He also described the tortures they were subjected to; a short video shot by Russian army captured the treatment described click here for video segment (contains disturbing scenes)
First part of the video below captures the hostages after the surrender; 2 females are part of the hostages. Russian officer also describes the killing of “snipers’ girls” – it’s unsure if it refers to these 2 females
A different version of the prisoners footage
Chechen woman by name of Milueva Lipa is being asked to identify herself and admit on video that she was a sniper. She is in a visibly worsened state compared with the previous video
The male hostages captured on a 30 minute film, shortly before they died. The women can no longer be seen.
To read more about Chernokozovo filtration camp, click here Torture. atrocities (Emily Gillian’s excerpts)
The hostage video was made public in 2004 by Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. According to her, making the video public was the idea of the Russian officer who had filmed it, as he hoped it will help “free him from a nightmare which continues to torture him right up to the present.”
The news report and video download link are still available on the newspaper website where Anna Politkovskaya worked.
http://politkovskaya.novayagazeta.ru/pub/2004/2004-031.shtml
Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in Moscow in 2006, supposedly for her human rights work and her open criticism of Kremlin’s corruption.
It was only through this video tape that the truth was revealed and the families of the prisoners finally learned of the faith of their missing relatives. It also reinforced declarations of Komsomolskoye witnesses like journalist Owen Matthews, who described seeing bodies with hands tied back and severe signs of torture.
The War in Chechnya had an extreme level of violence. To understand what role “violence” plays in Russian military culture, below is a so-called disciplinary video with young Russian conscript soldiers.
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War crimes are a sad reality and a fact of every war. However, this particular event involved a declaration of amnesty from the highest state authority – the Russian president himself and the Parliament, and also involved a public statement from military officials of the prisoners “being amnestied” once they had surrendered.
The fact that the amnesty proved to be a false promise and that the real outcome was purposely disclosed from the public by the authorities – most probably with the knowledge of the President himself, affects the credibility of the authority in the Russian state on the highest level, not only in relation to the Chechens but also on international level.
Cheberloy region is situated around Kazenoyam lake, near Cheberloyevsky canyon; it was inhabited by Cheberloy teip, who lived in more than a dozen settlements. After the 1944 deportation of the entire Chechen population, the settlements were destroyed by the Soviets. In present day, only one village (Makazhoy) is inhabited by a handful of residents.
The traditional occupation of Cheberloy people was cattle breeding and bee-keeping – the latter is still practiced by the few residents left.
Most of the settlements belong to the Argun Museum Reserve.
To read a full article on the Cheberloy people, scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Cheberloyevsky canyon (click photo to view gallery)
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A few km past Kazenoy-am lake is the ancient Khoi village, dating back to the 9th century. Khoi had 7 towers and 350 homes – residential , military and guard towers; religious monuments, mosques , residential buildings, numerous domestic buildings and a cemetery. The village was destroyed by the Soviets, the only structure left almost intact was the cattle/ poultry dwelling.
Pagan sanctuary
ancient cattle/ poultry dwellings
ancient cattle/ poultry dwellings in Khoi
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Makazhoy settlement (only structure still standing is one 7 stories-high tower)
archeologist at Makazhoy
old cemetery in Makazhoy
vacation homes scattered throughout Makazhoy
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The ruins of Kazenoy fortress (almost completely destroyed) are located in the vicinity of Kazenoy-am lake.
Kazenoy fortress
view from Kazenoy fortress
aerial view of Kazenoy fortress
Local children Makazhoy
Makazhoy traditional bee-keeprs
Local children
(article from Prague Watchdog)
The history of Chechnya is inextricably linked with the mountains. Almost every Chechen knows his roots and the place from which his teyp, or clan, originates. Though they may spend long years living on the plains, many of Chechens never break their connection with the land of their fathers (Daymohk), which is situated in the mountains.
The homeland of the Cheberloy teyp, one of Chechnya’s many communities, is located in the mountainous part of the south-east of the republic, bordering on Dagestan. Of the Cheberloyans’ once densely inhabited place of residence it may be said that it has become depopulated. Cut off from the outside world, only around ten families now live here.
The road to Cheberloy begins at the village of Kharachoy, near Vedeno, and then rises sharply in a narrow serpentine coil through the mountains. After an hour of travel one is already at cloud level. On this very difficult stretch of the road there were formerly two staging posts for travellers who became waylaid. Here there were small, tent-like huts in which they could wait for bad weather to pass, or spend the night.
The road continues to the very top of the ridge, at times descending, but then once again rising steeply above the clouds. This road is the only one along which it is possible to drive by car, and it leads past Lake Kezenoy-Am, known because of its beauty and uniqueness as “the pearl of the Caucasus”.
After a drive of one and half hours along the mountain, the road diverges in different directions: one fork leads to Dagestan, the other to the neighbouring Shatoysky district. This is the birthplace of the Cheberloy teyp, which some historians consider one of the oldest in contemporary Chechnya. Incidentally, it was along this road that Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and his forces crossed into Dagestan in 1999.
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Makazhoy
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These localities are now almost empty. A dozen villages are totally deserted. Only a few people continue to live here, and only in one village, Makazhoy. The other villages – Kenkhi, Kiri, Buni, and so on, are now derelict. The mountain folk who remain socialize with residents of the border villages in Dagestan, for they are geographically closer.
The occupations of the Cheberloyans are the ones traditional among mountain-dwellers: cattle breeding and bee-keeping. Fortunately, the climatic conditions allow them. The area is located in alpine meadows. In winter the road is cut off from the outside world. The mountain folk themselves sat that this time of year is the most tedious one, for there isn’t even any one to talk to on the long winter nights. Things liven up in spring, when their relatives travel to the mountains, and there have recently been some visitors who simply want to relax and breathe fresh mountain air for a few days.
56-year-old Adiz has lived in Makazhoy since 1959. He returned here with his family after the authorities gave the Chechens permission to return from their exile in Kazakhstan. Recently he has been based in the village of Petropavlovskaya, but he spends each summer in Makazhoy until the onset of winter. “It used to be good. There was life here,” he says with nostalgia in his voice. “We say bad things about the Soviet times, but in those days there was a road which the services looked after. Nowadays no one wants to have anything to do with these places. In the old days there were 244 families living here. Now there’s practically no one,” Adiz says as he stirs some mutton in a saucepan on the fire.
Adiz discusses the simple concerns of everyday life, but avoids mentioning politics. Politicians he refers to contemptuously as “politickers” [politikany] . “Chechens used to be more friendly. They had respect for one another. Since 1959 there have only been three killings in our village. They were mostly the result of domestic quarrels and blood feuds. Apart from those, there haven’t been any incidents like the ones that happen almost daily down on the plains. Politics is something that should be taken care of by the ‘politickers’ – we’re just ordinary residents,” Adiz comments, sampling the gravy in the saucepan, and nodding as a sign that the mutton is ready to eat.
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Buni
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Three or four kilometres from Makazhoy one comes to the farm of Buni. Former residents say that the name of the locality is derived from the Arabic word bani, meaning “son of”, or “descendant”. The village is now derelict.
Dzhalavdi lived in Buni until 1992. He was the first of his four brothers to truly come down from the mountains to the plains, and he settled in the village of Petropavlovskaya, near Grozny. There were still people living there during the first war and until the outbreak of the second, but the constant “mop-ups” by Russian soldiers and the intolerable living conditions forced them all to change their place of residence.
There is not a single undamaged house in the village. They were all destroyed by explosions. This was done by the Russian soldiers who lived in the village for several years. The traces of their long presence are everywhere. In every corner of the houses there are large piles of rubbish, thousands of empty tin cans that once contained butter or canned meat, and cartridge boxes. In a corner of one house there are even two intact artillery shells, which the locals call “landmines” [fugasy].
Dzhalavdi takes a long look at what is left of his home. “If there was electricity and gas, I’d be happy to come back here. It wouldn’t be any harder to live here than going to school was when I was a boy,” says, recalling the years of his childhood, when every day he had to walk five kilometres across mountain slopes.
Near his house there is a large amount of agricultural machinery. “That’s a potato planter, and that’s a potato digger,” says, pointing to the rusty trailers for the tractors. Potato-growing is one of the most lucrative occupations in these mountains. The potatoes are exported to Russia and sold.
“The land here is fertile. If you treat it as a living being, it gives you a good return. If you put a wooden walking stick in the ground here, it will grow into a tree after a couple of years,” Dzhalavdi says jokingly about the quality of the soil.
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The Polygon
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In Makazhoy and the other villages there are many reminders of antiquity. It is easy enough to destroy the house of a mountain-dweller, but the soldiers have not managed to get rid of the cattle sheds, some of which are a hundred years old, or more. They could have done so with dynamite, of course, but either they grudged it or their consciences were pricked. So these sheds, which can be classed as architectural relics, still stand. They were built of unhewn blocks of stone which were fitted together so that their ceilings formed an arch. In this design is so solid that stand the roof and heavy tank and truck.
Each village has a local cemetery beside it. Many of these cemeteries are derelict. In Makazhoy an old one has survived in good condition. Some of the grave markers, which have grown crooked with age and resemble arrows stuck in the ground, are more than 150 years old. On many of them, next to the Arabic script, a Star of David can be seen. The large lumps of rock which served as gravestones were made in such a way that everything superfluous was scraped off the surface, leaving only the essential symbols and quotations from the Koran. The modern craftsmen have an easier task: they simply clean the symbols and Arabic script out of the stone.
The derelict Cheberloysky district has become a favourite haunt of the neighbouring Dagestanis. Mostly they are Andis and Avars who live in two villages, Ansalt and Rakhat. They often spend whol summers in the Chechen villages, where they graze their cattle and keep bees..The Cheberloyans take a cautious view this of this quiet expansion by their neighbours. After all, a neighbour is closer than a distant relative. So unless one doesn’t show them that there are owners of this land, they may come and live here permanently, they reason.
While it is possible to settle most issues with the neighbouring Dagestanis, it is far more difficult to do this with the Russian soldiers. The Russian army’s top brass, having observed that few people live in the district, have decided to use it for an artillery training polygon, or target site. The fact that all around there are historic tower structures, many of which are hundreds of years old, causes them little concern.
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Kezenoy-Am
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Lake Kezenoy-Am was once famous for its unique beauty and its tourist centre at Benoy. The water in the lake is brilliantly transparent and eternally icy. The Soviet academic rowing team used to train on the lake. The fact of the matter remains unverified, but some particularly advanced mountain dwellers maintain that there are only two lakes in the world that are suitable for such training. One is in Switzerland and the other is Kezenoy-Am. The height of more than 1800 metres above sea level gives the water sufficient density to provide the rowers with increased strain during training.
There are several legends about how the lake came into being. The most common of these says that this was originally the site of a village where nearly all the inhabitants had refused an old man a bed for the night. Only one lonely old woman took him in. In the morning, when he left, the old man, who was a visionary, warned of a future flood. Thus all the villagers drowned, while the old woman managed to climb a hill and watch the village being swept away.
At present the Benoy tourist centre is in a state of complete ruin. Its restoration forms part of the plans for the development of tourism in Chechnya. The mountain dwellers hope this will happen soon. “If they make this place attractive to tourists again, it will be nice for us as well. We don’t care how they do it, as long as they restore the district to how it used to be.”
source: Human Rights Watch, BBC News, English Pravda
Young conscript soldiers being “disciplined” for being deserters or committing other petty crimes. WARNING video contains disturbing content
Conscription in Russia is a 12 month draft, mandatory for all male citizens age 18–27. The mandatory term of service was reduced from 18 months at the beginning of 2008.
“Dedovshchina” is the subjection of new junior conscripts to brutalization by the conscripts serving their last year of compulsory military service, as well as NCOs and officers. It is often cited as a major source of poor morale in the ranks.
In the last 25 years, the abuse in the Russian army has risen to human rights violations.
Young men are killed or commit suicide every year because of dedovshchina. Tens of thousands of soldiers run away, while thousands more are left physically and or mentally scarred.
The Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia was created in 1989 in order to protect the rights of young soldiers.
In 2012, a draftee from Chelyabinsk region, Ruslan Aiderkhanov, was raped and tortured to death by his seniors. The lone witness who testified against the alleged perpetrators, Danil Chalkin, was later found shot dead in his military base. A contract soldier, Alikbek Musabekov was later arrested in this incident. (read news report here)
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veteran of the Chechen war:
Arkady and his parents before his departure for Chechnya
“It’s no longer a secret in Russia. It’s existed for 30 years. We never talk about it in the media, but nothing has changed. They’re just the rules of the game. If you have a son, you know one day he’ll have to leave for two years to do military service, and that for those two years, he’ll be beaten. The military reflects society, therefore, if society is cruel, the military will be cruel.”
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A Russian soldier has been sentenced to 4 years in jail for abusing a conscript soldier so badly that his legs and genitals required amputation. The incident took place at the Chelyabinsk Tank Academy in the Ural Mountains on New Year’s Eve 2005, while Sgt Sivyakov’s unit went on a drinking spree to celebrate the holiday. The conscript soldier was tied to a chair and beaten, and made to crouch for so long that the blood flow to his legs was cut off and he developed gangrene. Nine months after the attack, he remains in hospital. Sivyakov, was convicted of exceeding his authority and using violence. He always denied any wrongdoing. The prosecution had demanded a penalty of six years in jail. Pte Sychev’s family denounced the punishment – even before it was handed out – as inadequate. More than 6,000 soldiers were victims of abuse last year, the military has said.
 Junior Sgt. Aleksandr V. Sivyakov is charged with abusing Private Sychyov. He has pleaded not guilty. |
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According to the UN International Panel for Struggle against Sexual Exploitation, the Russian army is plagued with male prostitution. A small amount of money is enough to find a Russian soldier-prostitute in the center of Moscow.
Servicemen may become male prostitutes in the Russian army for various reasons. There are young men who voluntarily offer sexual favors to their homosexual clients; others are forced into prostitution against their own will. Newcomers, especially those who finished higher schools before joining the army, suffer from sexual harassment more often than others. Brave soldiers try to protect their honor and rights, although there is no one to help them: commanders and military officials may often be involved in the sex business too.
“When I was standing on duty, two bullies came up to me and shoved me into the stockroom, a soldier serving at one of Moscow’s military units recollects. “They raped me there in turn. It was very painful and revolting. It didn’t take them much time to finish, but the next day I started noticing other soldiers giving me strange looks. I instantly realized that those bastards let everyone know what they had done to me. An officer came up to me one day and said to me point-blank: “Tomorrow you will to serve two clients.” I knew that if I said “no” then I would spend my last days spitting blood. But still, I told him “no.” When the officer heard that, he pulled out pictures of me being raped in the stockroom. “If you don’t serve the clients, you mother will see these pictures,” said he. I was forced into prostitution,” the soldier said.
Another serviceman, named only as Ilya, became a male prostitute during his second month in the army. The young man received a letter from his girlfriend. “The sergeant told me that day that I would no longer need girls. He and three other men forced me to go behind the barracks to the abandoned construction site. They made me kneel their, tied me up to a lamppost and hit me several times in the groin. The pain was so strong that I lost the will to fight them back. They made me open my mouth and raped me. I don’t remember how long it continued. When I came to my senses I didn’t want to live. I was seriously thinking about committing suicide. I was shocked that the rapists were visiting me regularly afterwards bringing fruit and vodka for me. When it ended they made me a prostitute,” Ilya said.
There were many incidents when soldiers prefer bid farewell to their lives being unable to cope with humiliation. However, military officials mostly say that such stories occur because of the unbalanced state of mind of the soldiers.
FULL STORY HERE http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/15-02-2007/87441-army_prostitute-0
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Boys beaten by older officer. The abuse gets gradually worse
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International group Human Rights Watch has published a detailed study of what it calls “horrific violence” against new conscripts in the Russian army.
The 86-page report was called “The Wrongs of Passage: Inhuman and Degrading Treatment of New Recruits in the Russian Armed Forces”
The report says organized bullying has not only continued since Soviet times, but has become harsher.
Human Rights Watch says that although the abuse has been known about for several years, Russia’s leadership has done nothing to address the problem.
One conscript, Alexander D, told Human Rights Watch that “the one way to avoid physical abuse was complete submission – turning into a ‘lackey’ who does whatever he is asked no matter how humiliating or senseless”.
He says he was repeatedly beaten for refusing to sew collars on senior soldiers’ jackets. Another time Alexander D’s belongings were taken away and he was sent out, along with others, to beg for money to buy vodka.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that most conscripts are ill-educated and frequently come from backgrounds with severe social problems, the report says.
Many junior officers either do not care about the welfare of their soldiers, or passively encourage the bullying as it gives a certain “discipline” to the barrack block.
First-year conscripts could also be forced to act out an old army joke called “dried crocodile”, he says.
The conscripts had to put their hands and feet on the posts at the head and feet of the bed and remain in push-up position for long periods of time.
“They [the dedy] lie down on the bed [beneath you] and God forbid you fall. They beat you up and then start from scratch. Sometimes they even burn your leg from down there… when they were drunk they could make you hang all night.”
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Almost always, the mistreatment is ignored or covered up. This time, though, the results were so unusual-and so ghastly-that there was no way the army could keep them secret.
The tragedy unfolded at a remote base on a bleak, impoverished island in the Pacific Ocean. In the wee hours of the morning last Tuesday, the two recruits decided they had had enough. They crept into the room where their tormentors were sleeping and opened fire with machine guns.
When the shooting stopped, 6 soldiers were dead and 3 others were badly wounded, according to official reports. The two recruits, identified only as Beltsov and Agdashev, then held off an army assault, even shooting down a helicopter, before finally surrendering hours later.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the barracks murders on the tiny island of Tanfilyev near Japan is how little they shocked ordinary Russians, who long have accepted vicious brutality as an unavoidable fact of military life.
“The relationship between older and younger soldiers is very primitive, almost on a savage level,” said Vladimir Romanov, a retired army colonel who did five years of research on the physical and psychological abuse of recruits and now teaches at a Moscow military academy.
“The root of the problem lies in the broader society, where people have been dehumanized and denied their rights for such a long time. The situation in the army is just a mirror of this. New recruits are treated like they have no rights. Older soldiers feel they can do whatever they like to them.”
FULL STORY HERE In Russia’s Army, Cruelty A Way Of Life
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SUICIDE OR MURDER?
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It is suspected that many reported suicides in the Russian Army are in fact cases where the soldiers were simply “hazed to death”. Read about the case of Ruslan Ayderkhanov here The Ayderkhanov Case.
Official letter from the Human Rights group “Memorial” addressed to the president of the Russian Federation Appeal to President Medvedev by Human Rights Defenders on the Death of Ruslan Ayderkhanov
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Russian soldier stands at checkpoint in Chechnya. Photo by Stanley Greene
The currency of passage at Russian checkpoints in Chechnya was often cigarettes. Sometimes it was food to fight off starvation. The Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees of Russia joined with Chechen women in Nazran to find their lost sons, often lacking even basic information such as the regiment name. Critics claimed that the Russian army treated its conscripts as cannon fodder or slave labour for officers. Source: theaftermathproject.org
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News report
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Two young conscripts humiliated, then physically abused by a larger group in the dorm rooms
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Read more in Torture and atrocities – “In Russia, winning wars has always been a matter of quantity, not quality,” said one conscript. “They don’t even count us as losses. We’re just meat.” A few episodes describe young “poorly-dressed exhausted soldiers” being sent ahead of the infamous mop up operations to check passports. They warn villagers of the massacre that the “bloodhounds” (Special Forces teams and contract soldiers) are being sent to carry on soon.
Read more in Chechnya veterans – How Russia treats its ‘heroes’ – Orders given under the influence of alcohol lead to unnecessary loss of young conscripts’ lives. Neglect by government, authorities and medical staff. For survivors – the return to a life of poverty, social rejection and humiliation.
Russian teen soldier in Grozny, Chechnya – first war
Russian conscript soldier
North Caucasus Land 