Ladies and gentlemen!
High Conference!

Please allow me to express my sincere thanks for the opportunity to speak from this podium. I would like to bring one important message to the attention of this conference. My nation is one of the most ancient in the world. The Caucasian race takes its name from our ancient ancestor Caucas. Our nation’s mindset rejects violence. Another feature of this mindset is respect for other people and this is why the Chechen people have never known class divisions or wars of aggression. This is a remarkable fact of our history. The Chechen people have always fought for their freedom. Today, as never before, we are threatened with physical extermination and spiritual degradation. The culprits are your own indifference and the anti-human ideology of the Russicism.

I would like to draw your attention to another message. The Chechens and the Russians are as incompatible as poles of a magnet. There are no spiritual or mental factors which would allow for their co-existence. Violence is the only factor which keeps the Chechen nation within the Russian space. We fight violence, we fight for our right to organise our own life in the same way you organise yours.

So what is impermissible about our demands? One could to some extent understand leaders to whom their nations have entrusted their fates. Indeed, Russia is a nuclear power and in addition Europe’s comforts depend on Russia’s resources but this should not justify the indifference to the fate of a nation being destroyed. Such policies of European states in the 1930s brought Europe’s nations to World War Two.

Europe should not be afraid of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, Russia is too cowardly to use it against you. We are the ones who should be afraid, we, the Chechens, and I shall tell you why.

With the onset of the second Russian-Chechen war one of the Russian State Duma politicians Vladimir Zhirinovsky urged the Russian government to use a nuclear bomb against the city of Dzhokhar (Grozny). I shall adduce just two from a long list of such examples.

With the start of hostilities against the Chechen Republic on 3 January 1995 a spare parts car market in Shali was hit during two air strikes using pellet bombs. Among the victims were over 100 dead. According to the staff of the Shali District Hospital 55 of those were from Shali, with another 186 wounded or injured. The final tally of that barbaric bombing raid against a civilian population has not yet been counted.

The second example concerns a flechette ballistic rocket air strike against the Central market in Grozny. It left 118 dead and over 400 wounded.

In both cases banned weapons of mass destruction had been used. Why? I shall answer this question.

To begin with, Russia wanted to know to what extent the international community would connive in the killing of the Chechen people. Its second task was to paralyse the will of the Chechen people with fear the name of which is state terrorism.

This state was born through terror and terror remains its essence, the essence of its changing regimes and the name for that terror is Russicism. We do not want to be part of that terrorist state.

We are not an Asian people. The Chechens are a European nation. Civilised nations should not have double standards. For this reason I shall read out Article Two of the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

‘In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Chechen people have experienced every clause in this convention, apart from the very last one. ‘Only children under 10, men over 65 and women would be considered refugees’ – this was the statement made on TV for the attention of the whole world by the commander of the North Caucasus Combined Force General Kazantsev, the man given a complete authority and power in the region. As a result of such practices by Russia the Chechen people has lost one third of its population.

Over 40 000 children alone were crippled in the nation which at one time estimated over one million people.

Today the Chechen nation lives in social conditions which would be deemed unbearable by any other nation in the world.
There are psychological and medical experiments carried out on the Chechen people in order to destroy them. In order to carry out such experiments the republic has been declared a closed area.

I would like to remind you of the incident which took place at a school in the village of Shelkovskaya when dozens of school girls, and only school girls, were struck by some mysterious psychological illness. Nobody, even today, has any coherent explanation of this hushed up fact.

The notion of the so-called ‘chechenisation of the conflict’, introduced by the Kremlin, implies genocide during which one set of Chechens are destroying other Chechens.

Today Europe must be aware that the Chechen people single-handedly faced the blow which was meant for the post Soviet republics and peoples of Eastern Europe, in the case of Russia’s victory over them. The annexations of the South Ossetian and Abkhaz territories are a case in point.

The Chechen problem is not Russia’s internal affair. The killing of a people cannot be an internal matter for one state.

The first thing the international community should demand from Russia, in particular, the European community, is that it investigates war crimes committed on the Chechen soil. Otherwise, a tribunal similar to the Nuremburg Trial should be set up.

Secondly, Europe should assist the Chechen nation in holding free elections in order to elect a legitimate government in accordance with the constitution of the ChRI. There is no other way of resolving a many centuries old conflict between the Chechen people and the Russian rulers. Specific mechanisms for resolving this conflict are contained in the proposal by our first president Dzhokhar Dudaev, which, for want of time, I shall bring to the attention of the high conference separately.

Thank you for your attention.

***
Conceptual principles of future relations between RF – Russia and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya.

Despite 436 years of confrontation between Russia and Ichkeriya, the burden of crimes committed by the Russian side in relation to the Chechen nation throughout this historical period, despite the repeated military aggression against the ChRI in order to:

destroy the Chechen nation
destroy the ChRI state
annex its territory and natural resources

despite the previously unseen cruelty with which this aggression has been carried out and which resulted in a gigantic and irreparable damage, the Government and the people of the ChRI adhere to the principles of international law both in building the ChRI state and in resolving any complex issue between nations and states and are opening up a way for a peaceful settlement of the military conflict, based on the following principles of future relations:

1. The Chechen nation and the ChRI state can under no circumstances be part of the Russian Federation due to the gravity of crimes committed against them throughout the centuries, due to the intransigence in the relations of the two sides as well as the illegitimate nature of the state entity which is the Russian Federation – Russia and its violation of the basic norms of law and democracy.

2. Under the international guarantees (the UN, US and the EU) and with the parties observing their contractual obligations, the ChRI could become an equal member of the CIS, integrating its main sectors of the economy (oil and gas production and refinement and transportation) for a period of ten years with a right to secede from the CIS if the Russian side or other CIS members renege on their contractual obligations towards the ChRI.

3. Broad cooperation with Russia, the CIS countries and countries of the international community in all areas covered by separate agreements.

After a violent and destructive war an equal membership in the international community requires that the making of the ChRI state be based on the principles of democracy and international law. This is the most difficult stage which would require help from the UN, US and Europe in the form of:

1. Assistance with the withdrawal of the Russian troops from the occupied territories.
2. Presence of observers without any complexes or biased attitudes, who would be real guarantors of the parties fulfilling their obligations.
3. Participation in the preparation and execution of free elections.
4. Provision of credit to buy back military equipment and weapons from the population .
5. Mine disposal in areas and facilities.
6. Environmental rehabilitation.
7. Guarantees of non-resumption of violence.
8. International cooperation in the field of non-proliferation of international terrorism and organised crime.
9. Medical and humanitarian aid for victims of war.

Direct and unconditional benefits of a peaceful resolution of the military conflict and of a mutually beneficial cooperation for Russia are as follows:

1. Stabilisation of the situation in the RF itself during the period of power struggle and state building in the RF.
2. Transition to legal norms in resolving controversial issues which would enhance Russia’s reputation and build trust in the international community, among the subject of the RF and in the CIS.
3. Economic stabilisation in view of cutting the back-breaking burden of military spending required to wage a war.

These are just a few of the direct benefits which would be succeeded by indirect benefits, far greater than the direct ones.

In the case of Russia continuing its violent approach, both it and the international community would get: 500 000 men aged 17 to 50 who have lost a roof over their heads, means to support themselves, jobs, whose souls have been scarred by war, who are well armed, who can fight, who are desperate and who are fanatical in their belief in the justice of the Creator of Worlds and who would gladly prefer to die in a sacred war than to live in shame in the evil world. The entire Chechen nation is united in its striving for independence whatever tribulations it would have to live through along the way.

The ChRI Government and the people want to see the Caucasus as a:

1. Demilitarised zone
2. Nuclear free zone
3. Zone of economic and political cooperation with a single currency
4. Zone of a peaceful nature preservation
5. Zone for research and study of world culture, history and languages
6. Regional centre for world religions

Each of the points would be supported by scientific and technical studies which mean nothing but benefits for the entire mankind.

As a proxy member of the international community the ChRI proclaims its aspiration:

– to become a member of the ‘peoples’ charter’, guarantor of the adherence to all legal norms;
– the ChRI as a state and the Chechen people as a nation do not harbour historical antagonisms or claims towards any state or nation in the world;
– the ChRI expresses its readiness for mutually beneficial cooperation with all countries and peoples of the world in all areas.

In view of the absence of a worthy international guarantor of the adherence to rights and freedoms of nations and of conflict resolution, the ChRI and its people are devoted to the search for peace and accord through mankind’s spiritual potential in the shape of world religions.

Mankind enters the 21 century not by creating but by destroying. In the last 10 years alone vast geopolitical areas have been involved in unwarranted massacre of people, destruction, regional conflicts and growing crime. This is happening against the background of limited natural resources, growing population, fragile democracy and spiritual poverty of populations, absence of an effective international guarantor of rights and freedoms.

A peaceful resolution of the Russian-Chechen war could help to bring about global peace which is so badly needed on the eve of the mankind’s entering the 21 century.

The First Deputy Represantative of Chechen Republic Ichkeria Government in Poland

Rubati Mitsaeva

“Speech by Rubati Mitsaeva at the Chechnya Conference in the European Parliament, 17 March 2009”