Akhmed Zakaev in the seminar "Checnya: The Forgotten War"

Akhmed Zakaev in the seminar "Checnya: The Forgotten War"

February, 19th 2009.

World Chechnya Day.

Monday marks one of the bloodiest and most brutal pages in the whole history of Russo-Chechen relations. On that day, 65 years ago, the whole Chechen nation of half a million people was exiled from their home land and deported to Central Asia and Kazakhstan - indeed my own family were among them.

As is well documented the pain of the losses that Chechens suffered in that distant past did not become the last pain they were to encounter, and sadly the struggle continues into our tragic present. It is true that the tactics deployed by the Kremlin today are more subtle, but the outcome is the same in that the displacement and persecution of Chechens continues via methods that are less obvious but equally as brutal.

On that day, in a cold February morning of 1944, several hundred thousands of Chechens were being loaded into cattle trains to be transported to the far away steppes of Kazakhstan . That was a scary road to nowhere.

Only one half of the nation would reach the destination, the rest would be left lying along the rails, the road of Death, sprinkled with snow. Tens of thousands were shot or burnt to death because there was no way to transport them.

A horrible reminder of those days is a village called Haibach, the whole population of which, 700 people in all, was burnt alive.

In the thirteen years of deportation hundreds of thousands of elderly, women and children died in a strange land. Such was a result of the claim that the whole Chechen nation was a traitor to the Russian Communist regime.

Thousands of broken lives, never-ending tears of families, hundreds of thousands of nameless graves in the steppes of Central Asia and Kazakhstan.

On January 26, 2004 the European Union officially recognized the deportation of the Chechen people as an act of genocide.

Grave crimes were committed against defenseless old people, women and children. Hundreds of thousands dead, mass extra-judicial executions, torture in concentration camps, abductions and disappearances of people, kidnappings and the list goes on.

Today Russia continues to violate international law on human rights and does everything in its power to stifle Chechnya’s legitimate claim for independence. Claims that peace and stability has returned to the region are just a guise to legitimize occupant’s regime of fear and oppression.

When I reflect on what happened 65 years ago, the brutality of war and struggle of the Chechen people that continues, I still believe that the law and historical justice are on the side of the Chechen nation. They just have to be.

The violence and blood that Russia spills at home and abroad demonstrates its disregard for moral and legal responsibilities in full view of the international community. What deeply saddens and frustrates me is the lack of political will to do something about it. I am deeply convinced that economic interests of certain countries and political careers of certain politicians should not be seen as more important than the fate of a million people nation. More than 250 thousand of innocent victims amongst the civilians, 40 thousand of them children, serve as a sufficient ground to initiate a war tribunal against Russian war criminals. The fact that Russia owns nuclear weapons and can therefore blackmail the international community should not prevent us from bringing Russian war criminals to trial.

I also think it is my duty to remind you that the illusions some political circles have about Russia ’s democratic progress are fatally dangerous for the whole mankind. Clearly, the world needs to find a way to make Russia comply with the basic principles of human rights, freedom of speech and the rule of law. It will be at your peril that the West deludes itself into believing that they just do things differently.

The way Russia silences critics living on foreign soil is starkly illustrated in the killing of the former ChRI President Zelimkhan Yandarbiev; the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the murder in Istambul of the ChRI citizen Islam Djanibekov and most recently, the fatal shooting in Vienna of Umar Israilov.

The ChRI Government, my Government, voices its strongest objection to the European Union’s lack of a clearly defined position in relation to the Russian Federation’ aggression against the Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya, crimes against humanity and absence of an effective system to protect the ChRI citizens who have found asylum in European countries.

We are counting on the Austrian authorities who had offered political asylum to Umar Ismailov and his family and who guaranteed his security while resident on the Austrian soil, to do everything they can to bring to justice both the perpetrators of this crime and their paymasters, whoever they might be.

Despite this bleak backdrop I remain an optimist that things can change – there really is no alternative. We need to bring about a new dialogue with Russia and begin a more constructive phase in relations to build stability in the whole of the Caucasus. And as for Chechnya specifically, my own view is that Peace and human rights can only be achieved if the Chechen’s right to self-determination is recognized through free and fair elections.

I would like to leave you with one final thought. This week is a year since Kosovo was granted independence. There has been no regional destabilization as many predicted which shows that a small independent state can viably survive in modern Europe . I invite you to draw your own conclusions on what can be achieved if the political will exists.

Thank you

Prime Minister of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Akhmed Zakaev, in the seminar "Chechnya: The Forgotten War" at Royal Society of Arts, London