The Russian freelance journalist and human rights activist, Elena Maglevannaya, who has applied for asylum in Finland, continues her work at the refugee reception centre in Joutseno, on the Finnish-Russian border.

Maglevannaya has been waiting for a decision on her asylum application for over a year now. If the Finnish immigration authorities grant her asylum, Maglevannaya vows to continue writing about human rights violations in Chechnya.

"It is impossible for me to return to Russia; that would be a death sentence," says Maglevannaya. She has finally received an invitation to a hearing at the Finnish Immigration Service, where she will have an opportunity to recount her reasons to apply for asylum.

"I am excited, but I have great trust in the European system. Here in Finland, there is rule of law. I have often been in a situation where law has no meaning or it does not exist at all," Maglevannaya says.

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Anzor Maskhadov, son of the late President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), Aslan Maskhadov, has written a book about his father entitled "Freedom Fighter: My Father, Chechen President." The book was published with financial support from Norway's Freedom of Expression Foundation (Fritt Ord).

The book contains 26 chapters, each focused on a definite period of Aslan Maskhadov's life. The book is so far available in Norwegian only, but talks are under way about translating it into both Russian and English. Anzor Maskhadov hopes that the Russian and English editions will be published by the end of August 2010.

Anzor Maskhadov spoke about his work in an exclusive interview to The Caucasian Knot. The interview is available in English on WaYNaKH Online:

http://www.waynakh.com/eng/2010/06/the-son-of-aslan-maskhadov-published-the-book-my-father-the-chechen-president/

Dear Finnish migration authorities,

We urge you to grant asylum to the Russian human rights defender and journalist Elena Maglevannaya. She arrived in Finland in late May 2009 and has stayed there since. Maglevannaya decided to apply for asylum in Finland after she was persecuted by the Russian authorities for her articles about the torture of Chechen inmates in Russian prisons. Moreover, Maglevannaya received several death threats from Russian ultranationalist organisations closely linked to the authorities.

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How long can Moscow ignore the mounting evidence against its Chechen puppet?

In the summer of 2004, two years and four months before she was gunned down in the entrance to her Moscow apartment, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya made a bold visit to Chechnya to interview 27-year-old Ramzan Kadyrov, who had recently become (with the Kremlin’s blessing) the republic’s de-facto leader. It proved to be a harrowing experience. When they met face to face, Kadyrov could not contain his rage at Politkovskaya for reporting on his brutal rise to power, even threatening to have her shot. Politkovskaya concluded later that “a little dragon has been raised by the Kremlin. Now they need to feed it. Otherwise it will spit fire.”

Politkovskaya was all too right. Since becoming president of Chechnya in 2007, Kadyrov has made the republic into his own fiefdom, which he rules by violence and terror. He has also, apparently, had his gunmen carry out a series of brazen killings of his perceived enemies in Moscow, Dubai, Istanbul and the North Caucasus.

Until recently, the Kremlin, which has provided military and economic support to Kadyrov’s regime, consistently brushed off the murder allegations against him. Since April, prosecutors in two separate cases—a murder in Vienna and a murder attempt in Moscow—have for the first time implicated Kadyrov directly. And in the weeks since those revelations, the Kremlin leadership appears to be showing misgivings about its unconditional support for Kadyrov. How these cases play out could have profound effects on the future of Moscow’s Chechen policy.

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As the Moscow bombings remind, the simmering insurgency and brutal crackdown in the Caucasus have left a landscape of damaged women, some all too ready to spread their pain to Russia's heartland.

The last time Patimat Magomedova saw her daughter, she was puttering around the house, manicuring her nails and using henna to dye her hair bright red. Maryam Sharipova, 27, had traveled a thousand miles to Moscow and climbed onto a crowded subway train at rush hour with an explosives-packed belt strapped around her waist. She was accompanied by a 17-year-old girl, also from Dagestan, who blew herself up at another station.

In the Russian news media, the women were immediately dubbed "black widows." Their assault on the subway was taken as proof that the country had been shuttled back to the fearsome days when hollow-eyed female militants stalked Moscow and other cities far from the wars where their men fought Russian forces. The subway bombings also sent ripples of unease across the turbulent, mostly Muslim republics strung along Russia's southern edge.

But it came as slim surprise that women were ready to die. This is a landscape of damaged women, grieving losses they dare not dwell upon. The closer you get to the fighting in the Caucasus, the murkier it appears. The violence in Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia is not easy to classify -- it is a mix of rebels who want independence, Islamist extremists bent on waging jihad, local clan and gang warfare and sectarian strife.

And as the fighting intensifies, it is the men who disappear. Masked agents pound on the door and cart them off for questioning. They come back beaten, or not at all. Sometimes the men are rebels; other times, their affiliations are bafflingly vague. It is the women who are left behind, their status and material comforts tangled up in the choices of their fathers, sons and husbands.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/13/world/la-fg-women-bombers13-2010apr13

Amnesty International Portugal and advertising agency Leo Burnett Iberia have launched TyrannyBook, a social network dedicated to the surveillance of some of the world's worst violators of human rights. As the name implies, the website is a Facebook clone, and looks almost exactly the same, with the familiar blue giving way to an aggressive red.

TyrannyBook is part of Amnesty International’s plan of getting more involved in social networks, both to gain the visibility inherent to these web platforms and to facilitate the contact between the causes it promotes and the public. The network aims to generate a global consciousness about the countless atrocities that take place across the globe.

http://www.waynakh.com/eng/2010/05/tyrannybook-%E2%80%93-the-social-network-to-keep-an-eye-on-tyrants/

Euroopan komission alainen tilastoyksikkö Eurostat julkaisi tiistaina vuoden 2009 pakolaistilastonsa. Eurooppaan tuli viime vuonna lähes 261 000 turvapaikanhakijaa; näistä lähes 48.000 Ranskaan. Kaiken kaikkiaan Venäjän Federaatiosta tulleiden turvapaikanhakijoiden määrä oli yli 20.000 henkilöä, eli toiseksi suurin määrä heti afgaanipakolaisten jälkeen.

Suomen osalta tilastot osoittavat huimaa nousua Venäjän federaatiosta tulleiden turvapaikanhakijoiden osalta. Pakolaisneuvonnan tilastoinnin mukaan Suomeen tuli turvapaikanhakijoita Venäjältä vuonna 2007 kaikkiaan 172 henkilöä, vuonna 2008 yhteensä 209 henkilöä, ja vuonna 2009 peräti 602 henkilöä.

Taustalla on Venäjän Federaation alueella yhä heikentyvä ihmisoikeustilanne, josta EU joutuu kantamaan oman vastuunsa. Tosin Venäjän maahanmuuttoviraston mukaan 44 % venäläisistä pakolaisista olisi muista IVY-maista tulleita venäjänkielisiä pakolaisia. Tämä väite ei ole kovin uskottava, sillä Eurostatin tilastointi rakentuu kansallisuuteen eikä kieleen. Kenties Venäjä ennakoi tulevaa historiankirjoitusta ja tilastoi jo tänään pohjoiskaukasialaiset ulkomaalaisiksi?

Lähteet: Eurostat, Pakolaisneuvonta, RIA Novosti

Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov ordered the kidnapping of a Chechen exile in Vienna in 2009, Austria’s counterterrorism department concluded. Kadyrov has denied any role in the killing of Umar Israilov, who was living in exile when he was fatally shot last year.

The Austrian government’s investigators concluded that Kadyrov ordered Israilov's kidnapping, and that the group of Chechens who tried to snatch Israilov from a Viennese street botched the job. One of them shot Israilov after he broke free and tried to escape.

The conclusions, which are based largely on circumstantial evidence, shift the focus now to Austria’s federal prosecutors’ office, which has been preparing indictments. A close Kadyrov aide, Shaa Turlayev, met with two of the suspects in the killing before Israilov was shot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/world/europe/28austria.html?hpw

Parents of armed insurgents in Chechnya will have no rights whatsoever as long as their children continue their armed fight, said Muslim Khuchiev, mayor of the Chechen capital, Grozny. Chechnya's official Vaynakh TV channel carried a report about a meeting on 7 April 2010 at which local officials, including Chechnya's "human rights ombudsman" Nurdi Nukhazhiev, openly threatened the relatives of insurgents.

Speaking to residents of Grozny's Staropromyslovsky district, Khuchiev said: "We will treat you the same way as your children treat civilians. If you think that after the talk you will be able to sit quietly at home, you are deeply mistaken." Zelimkhan Istamulov, head of the Staropromyslovsky district added: "You live on my territory. If you think that from this moment you will be able to live free, to walk around, it is not true."

Source: WaYNaKH Online, 13.04.2010

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has established a new federal district in Muslim-dominated North Caucasus. The President appointed Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin, governor of the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk and former board chairman of Norilsk Nickel, to head the North-Caucasian Federal District. The new federal district comprises Russia's volatile republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia, as well as the Stavropol region, with the administrative centre in Pyatigorsk.

http://rt.com/Politics/2010-01-19/north-caucasus-federal-district.html