#14
RFE/RL (Un)Civil Societies
Vol. 4, No. 2, 26 February 2003
(Compiled by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick)
HAZING AND THE DRAFT DECRIED, CHECHEN DEPORTATION REMEMBERED ON RED ARMY DAY IN RUSSIA.

The traditional Red Army Day on 23 February continues to be celebrated in Russia as the day honoring Defenders of the Fatherland, and this year became an official day off from work as well. Pollsters found that 64 percent of the public still completely trusts the army, followed by a slightly lesser number (55 percent) who believe the military can still defend Russia from an external threat, reported polit.ru, citing a VTsIOM survey. Nearly half (47 percent) believe Russia actually faces such a threat, although only 23 percent believe in a compulsory draft.

Many are aware of hazing in the army and discount official claims of only 10 percent of units being involved in the practice, polit.ru reported. The Union of Committees of Soldiers Mothers of Russia and the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) held a joint press conference to announce the formation of a new group called "No to Hazing!" polit.ru and other wire services reported on 23 February. The new fund is part of a campaign by SPS leader Boris Nemtsov to reform the army, and the group plans to offer legal aid to soldiers in need.

Officially, the beating and intimidation of soldiers by each other or by their seniors is known as "neustavnye otnosheniya" or "nonregulation relations" although popularly, the practice is known as "dedovshchina," a word with the same root as "grandfather" or "elder." The Soldiers' Mothers claim 2,000 soldiers died last year outside of combat areas due to such harsh hazing practices. Some 40,000 soldiers appealed to their group for help with abuses, including 2,867 in Moscow. Members of the Yabloko party also used the occasion to demonstrate in front of the draft boards in Moscow calling for "a professional army and a decent standard of living" for soldiers, and against the compulsory draft, the Agency for Social Information reported on 20 February.

Conscientious objectors have been critical of a new federal law on alternative service due to go into effect in January 2004, because it specifies that draftees refusing to bear arms will still have to live in barracks outside their home district. At a hearing in the State Duma on 20 February, the deputy ministry of labor announced that there were indications of more than 40,000 workplaces available for alternative service announced by local governments, but they complained that they had no housing available or funding for travel. Officials are still disputing the type of workplaces for performing alternative service, with some claiming jobs in the military-industrial complex would be as appropriate as positions in health or agriculture, "Vremya novostei" reported on 21 February.

The Chief Military Prosecutor's Office says the Soldiers' Mothers claims are inflated, but still admits to 1,200 noncombat deaths for the armed forces in 2002, reporting that 2,000 noncombat deaths were suffered by all persons in uniform from the "power ministries," with 10,500 soldiers and officers killed in the last three years and an additional 75,500 wounded on noncombat duty, "Nezavisimaya gazeta" reported on 21 February. These figures are close to official statistics for the nine-year war in Afghanistan, where 14,433 were killed and 54,000 were wounded, "Nezavisimaya gazeta" reported. The Military Prosecutor also admitted that 800 soldiers and officers were killed by their own men -- an indirect symptom of hazing which leads to vengeance murders. The Military Prosecutor has even more cases than the Soldiers' Mothers, saying that in 2002 43,000 investigations were conducted on the basis of soldiers' complaints with findings of some 80,000 violations, "Nezavisimaya gazeta" reported. Another NGO, Mother's Right, says the numbers per year are more like 3,000, because some suicides are the result of hazing, and some deaths are from lack of medical care, such as a young man who reportedly first developed blisters from army boots and wound up dying of sepsis. Fleeing such conditions, some 6,000 soldiers were said to have deserted last year, the Soldiers' Mothers said.

Authenticating the reports of brutality, especially given the tendency of those in uniform to close ranks, can be extremely difficult. In St. Petersburg, the Soldiers' Mothers attempted to mount an official investigation into numerous complaints about the Nakhimov Academy, site of alleged beatings and sexual harassment by fascistic groups, polit.ru reported on 25 February. The Military Prosecutor of the Leningrad Military District could not confirm the complaints. At least one mother found that appeals sent to the Military Prosecutor about a senior military official of the academy led to that official calling her in and producing her own letter -- which went no further.

Dark hints were made about the fate of Dmitrii Kholodov, an investigative reporter who exposed military corruption and was blown up by a suitcase bomb in 1996. After another military tragedy on 20 February in Krasnoyarsk, where a soldier shot four of his fellow soldiers before committing suicide, President Vladimir Putin commented that "discipline needs to be improved" and "nonregulation relations" eliminated, although prosecutors continued to maintain in comments to the Russian media that "nervous breakdowns" rather than hazing were at issue in many cases.

Coincidentally on 23 February, surrounded by some 80,000 Russian troops stationed in the North Caucasus, Chechens marked with rallies and gatherings their national day of mourning, the 59th anniversary of the date in 1944 when the Chechen-Ingush people were deported to Central Asia, thousands dying en route. In Moscow, some 300 people carrying signs saying "Europe and America -- stop Putin in Chechnya," and "Stop the Kremlin's terrorism in Chechnya" lit candles and observed a moment of silence in memory of the deportees at a demonstration in front of the headquarters of the Federal Security Service, AFP reported the same day.

Eldar Zeynalov, a human rights activist from Azerbaijan, recalled a story of a police chief, his relative, who took part in the deportation in 1944. The relative, a former NKVD (the precursor to the KGB) official, said he and other Soviet police were ordered to force Chechen villagers to leave their homes and walk along mountain roads under armed guard. Some of the Chechen men managed to grab rifles and scramble up cliffs to shoot at the police guards, who were walking along the side of the road, apart from the crowd. He described how the guards were then forced to break orders and separated the villagers' column into two and walked between the civilians, using them as a live shield on both sides. They sent an elder to tell the Chechens hiding in the mountains that if they kept shooting, they would fire into the crowd. The firing stopped, and the Chechens were forced into trains to be taken into exile in Central Asia.

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