The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) can no longer abide by the wait-and-see attitude of its executive body as Europe’s institutional watchdog of human rights, democracy, and the state of the law. In rebuking the Council of Ministers, PACE sent a clear message that could be read in the title of the resolution it adopted in Strasbourg on 25 January: Human rights violations in the Chechen Republic: the Committee of Ministers’ responsibility vis-à-vis the Assembly’s concerns.

Resolution 1479 (2006) accompanied by Recommendation 1733 (2006) came on the heels of a particularly harsh report by the Commission of Legal Affairs and Human Rights (Doc. 10774) presented on 4 January by German MP Rudolf Bindig.

If a number of the resolution’s articles directly address the Russian authorities, urging them to put an end to the “the ongoing serious human rights violations […] still occurring on a massive scale in a climate of impunity in the Chechen Republic” and elsewhere in the North Caucasus region, others are directed at the Committee of Ministers. The Assembly is “most dissatisfied with the replies of the Committee of Ministers to its recommendation. It regrets in particular that the monitoring of the human rights situation in the Chechen Republic, put into place by the Committee of Ministers in June 2000, has been at a standstill since the spring of 2004.

The resolution’s finding, even if not approved by the Committee of Ministers, is conclusive. It states, “The Assembly fears that the lack of effective reaction by the Council’s executive body in the face of the most serious human rights issue in any of the Council of Europe’s member states undermines the credibility of the Organisation.” Not a strong enough concern, it would seem, to stir the Council of Europe and its executive body out of its apparent inaction, with the power struggles seeming to benefit the Russian authorities.

A Council of Europe that lacks credibility

If the Parliamentary Assembly has raised its voice, it is that this new resolution reaffirms the previous resolutions 1323 (2003) and 1403 (2004), and recommendations 1600 (2003) and 1679 (2004), which all noted numerous violations of human rights in Chechnya and condemned the impunity of the Chechen and Russian security forces carrying out acts of violence against its civilian population. Without backing from the Committee of Ministers, their impact was very limited, not reaching beyond the Assembly’s debating chamber.

This is not, however, the Assembly’s first foray into this issue. At the end of 1999, following a wave of bombings attributed to various Chechen terrorist groups and the incursions made into Dagestan by the warlords Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab, Russian security forces rapidly regained control of the situation during the siege, then capture of Grozny in February 2000.

In April 2000, in protest to the acts of violence committed against civilian populations, the Parliamentary Assembly sanctioned the members of the Russian delegation, suspending their voting rights. It was a symbolic gesture supported neither by the Council of Europe’s executive body nor by other international organisations, and the following year the Assembly ratified the Russian delegation’s credentials despite continuous human rights violations. For the French media, the Council of Europe lost all credibility as regards human rights.

Still victims

The Chechen population, exhausted and bled dry by a 10-year-old conflict, have suffered another setback as the different international organizations, and more particularly the Council of Europe, have abandoned them. In protest, Said-Emin Ibragimov, president of a Chechen human rights association, and a former Chechen Information Minister and boxing champion, began a 39-day hunger strike on 10 December 2005 outside the PACE building in Strasbourg. “I underwent this hunger strike to highlight the suffering of the Chechen people. This is my response to the cynical silence of the entire international community,” declared Ibragimov.

Ibragimov undertook this desperate act, which he ended on 18 January following an awkward appeal from the Council of Europe, for several reasons. First, he wanted to draw attention to the situation in Chechnya, which, according to Ibragimov, is far more disastrous than the Council’s reports have stated. “When European representatives, such as Swiss MP Andreas Gross, go to Chechnya to investigate the situation, Russian authorities take them to the calmest areas. These visits are contrived, and what the representatives write in their reports in no way describes the real situation at hand,” deplores Ibragimov. And what are his main concerns? Obtaining legitimate international legal recognition concerning the violations committed in Chechnya and changing the image Europeans have of the Chechen people, whom they all too often consider as terrorists.

The reason for such apathy

But Ibragimov’s concerns have come up against the Council of Europe's wait-and-see attitude, which is often justified as the result of the complexity of the Chechen conflict and the lack of reliable leaders with which to negotiate—there are multiple tensions and divisions within the Chechen separatist’s camp, which scattered over the province. Then there is the Kremlin’s strategy, with Vladimir Putin linking the war against the Chechen rebels to the international war against terrorism, which was facilitated by the events of September 11, 2001 and the strategic rapprochement between the United States and Europe that followed.

The international community has clearly distanced itself since. Under the pretext of respecting Russia’s sovereignty, it has been careful not to criticise the Russian position on Chechnya. Under such reasoning, threats of even diplomatic sanctions are now considered counter-productive, all the more so as each member state of the different international organisations is primarily interested in fostering good relations with one of the principal suppliers of energy to Europe.