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SPECIAL REPORT


Natalia Estemirova Chechnya


On the morning of July 15, 2009, history teacher Natalia Estemirova was abducted by armed men out- side her apartment in Grozny, Chechnya. According to eyewit- nesses, she was put in a car and driven away. She could only shout out that she was being abducted. Her body was found a few hours later in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia. She had been shot at point blank range. Natalia was a leading human


rights activist for the Memorial Human Rights Centre. The Chechen government has still not carried out a full investigation into her killing and nobody has been brought to justice. The 51-year-old mother of one


had been instrumental in several of the most high profile cases in the region. She gathered eye-witness


accounts of some of the worst crimes against humanity commit- ted in the second Chechen conflict, such as mass killing in the village of Novye Aldy. She worked with journalist


Murdered: Human rights activist Natalia Estemirova was abducted and killed in July 2009 Khabibulla Akpulatov


Uzbekistan For nearly six years, teacher Khabibulla Akpulatov has been left to rot in a prison more than 100 miles away from his fam- ily’s home. Married with one grown


up son, Khabibulla, like many teachers in the UK, helps out in his local community. He is an active member


of Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU) – a group which has worked tirelessly to address the rights of local farmers. Yet that is the very reason


he is in jail now. Khabibulla’s “crime” was


to be one of 60 signatories of a letter addressed to the coun- try’s president and the general prosecutor, complaining about the reported corruption of the head of a collective farm in Samarkand in south-eastern Uzbekistan. Three signatories of the let-


ter were singled out by the National Security Service and charged with libel. He was one of the three and on October 18, 2005, he was given a six-year jail sentence. The trial was reported


to be unfair as there were a number of procedural viola- tions and unsubstantiated evi- dence. The distance to the jail


has makes it almost impos- sible for his family to visit him as they do not have the money to pay for the travel. His health has also declined rap- idly – he has now lost about 20 kilogrammes. Khabibulla was due to be


released in 2009 as part of a general amnesty, but instead his sentence was extended by a further three years for “viola- tion of prison order”. Amnesty believes that the


charges of libel have been brought to punish him for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression. Amnesty has adopted


Khabibulla as a prisoner of conscience and is calling for his immediate release. For more on the HRSU,


visit www.hrsu.org


Rabiha al-Qassab UK/Iraq


A life spent glued to the telephone more in hope than expectation is hardly the world most teaching assistants expect to live. But for Rabiha al-Qassab, a


teacher from Iraq who now lives in London, that has become her daily routine – for her husband is 68-year-old Ramze Shihab Ahmed. Ramze arrived in the UK from


Iraq in 2002 and has dual Iraqi and UK nationality. He went back to Iraq on November 9, 2009, hoping to secure the release of his son Omar from detention. But instead he was arrested and tortured himself, and has been detained ever since. Now Rabiha waits at her north


London home hoping the phone will ring and her husband will return home. Rabiha, 63, explained:


“Ramze used to be a general in the Iraqi army. In 1998 we had to leave the country because he was involved in a group that wanted


to overthrow Saddam Hussein. We came to the UK as political refu- gees. In December 2009, my hus- band’s family in Iraq called him to say his son Omar – my stepson – had been arrested. In November, he went to Iraq to try to help Omar.” After just a few weeks, Ramze


was at a relative’s house having dinner when Iraqi security officials arrested him. “Another stepson called to


tell me Ramze had been arrested. Straight away I called the British embassy in Iraq.” The Iraqi authorities denied


holding him and she was not to hear from him until March 28, 2010. “My mobile phone rang. It was


Ramze. The guards had given him the phone and said they would release him if his family paid $50,000. But he was clever. He said okay, took the phone, then told me: ‘I am in al-Muthanna prison, call the embassy.’ They cut the phone and tortured him.” He was partly suffocated with a


plastic bag several times a day dur- ing interrogation. He was also left suspended by his ankles, hanging


Anna Politkovskaya on many of her trips to the Chechen Republic and helped her to get in contact with victims of human rights violations. Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in October 2006.


from a high metal bunk bed, which caused extreme pain in his feet. He was given electric shocks on his body, including on his genitals. Security officials told him that if


‘


he did not confess they would bring his wife and they would rape her in


In recent years, she continued to


collect information on grave human rights violations, such as extraju- dicial executions, enforced disap- pearances, torture and ill-treatment in detention, as well as working on implementation of social and economic rights in the post-conflict Chechnya. She would often help affected people to fight corrupt offi- cials. In an increasingly restrictive


environment in Chechnya, where freedom of the media and the work of human rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were under serious threat, Natalia was one of the very few people who dared to publish information about human rights violations in which govern- ment officials might have been involved. Natalia told Amnesty about


threats by president Ramzan Kadyrov against her, her daugh- ter, and also against Anna Politkovskaya. Following one such threat in March 2008, she had to leave the country for several weeks. In July 2009, she spoke to the


media about the enforced disap- pearance of a young man from a hospital where he had been under police guard, as well as about a case of alleged extrajudicial exe- cution. She was reportedly told by the ombudsman of human rights of the Chechen Republic that her comments to the media had upset


prison thought he was dead. Now he can’t use his legs because of the torture. “My husband is an old man, he


is disabled and he is sick. So how would he be able to send money to al-Qa’ida? The Iraqi govern-


He was clever. He said okay,


took the phone, then told me: ‘I am in al-Muthanna prison, call


the embassy’. They cut the phone and tortured him


front of him. They wanted him to confess that he had links with al- Qa’ida in Iraq and that he was fund- ing al-Qa’ida activities. Following repeated torture, Ramze eventually signed a statement which incrimi- nated him. “For three days he thought he would die. All the people in the


ment is lying. They torture people and get them to say whatever the government wants.” Al-Muthanna prison was closed


down after a scandal about torture of detainees held there broke in the media in April 2010. Ramze is currently being held in al-Rusafa Prison and is await-


’


the authorities in Chechnya and that she had put herself at a risk by doing so. She was killed shortly after. In spite of several statements


at a very high level, including by the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that this crime would be solved and perpetrators would be put to justice, nearly two years since Natalia’s murder, there are still no reliable signs that those involved in the murder will be brought to justice. Natalia’s murder has had a


chilling effect on civil society in Chechnya. Shortly after her murder, the NGO she worked for, Memorial, suspended its work there and even though they have since reopened the office, some of their staff members have had to leave the country. Amnesty is calling for a full,


impartial and independent investi- gation into the murder of Natalia. Following her murder, human rights defenders in Chechnya have dared even less to speak out against human rights violations. If Amnesty can achieve justice


for her murder, it will also help to strengthen other human rights defenders working in the region. For more information on


Natalia’s case, visit www.amnesty. org/en/news-and-updates/news/ human-rights-activist-natalia- estemirova-murdered-in-russia -20090716


ing trial. Amnesty International is calling on the Iraqi authorities to ensure Ramze receives a fair trial with no evidence obtained under torture being used against him and for the torture allegations to be independently investigated. At the start of this month,


Rabiha visited Amnesty and was presented with nearly a thousand cards offering their support to her husband – nearly all of which were collected and created by Amnesty school groups across the UK. A photo of her visit was then


passed on to the British embassy in Baghdad. Last week, they man- aged to visit Ramze in prison and gave him the photograph. During the visit Ramze was


able to make a 15-minute phone call to Rabiha on a safe line pro- vided by the embassy staff. He told Rabiha that he was


extremely happy to see her in the picture and to see all the support from people in the UK. For more informa-


tion on Ramze’s case, visit www.amnesty.org.uk/ramze


Solidarity: Around 1,000 messages of support have been collected for Rabiha al-Qassab’s husband Ramze, who has been held in Iraq for 15 months


SecEd • March 17 2011


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