Groznyy, 27 April: President of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov has vowed to dismiss officials who do not pay due attention to human rights watch in Chechnya.

"Human rights watch is one of my key presidential duties... Those who ignore or do not pay due attention to problems related to violation of children's rights, will not work," Kadyrov said on Saturday (26 April) at an extended government session devoted to human rights. He stressed that this particularly relates to heads of (local) administrations who work with people locally as representatives of the president.

The reason for this harsh statement from the president was Chechen human rights commissioner Nudri Nukhazhiyev's report on the results of the commission's work over the past year. Nukhazhiyev said that heads of administrations do not comply with the republican president's decree "On additional measures to secure human rights and citizens' freedoms", signed at the end of last year (2007).

"It is a serious decree relating to the most important sphere in our work. If heads of administrations, who are to implement my policy locally, do not implement it, they do not conform to the positions they hold," Kadyrov said.

He demanded that the head of the presidential administration create a special commission to check the implementation of his orders by local administrations. "Based on the results of the check, I will make personnel decisions," Kadyrov said.

Ombudsman Nukhazhiyev said at the meeting that "the president's non-standard and extraordinary approach allowed to solve human rights problems that seemed insoluble".

"No constituent part of Russia has a situation where the head of the region would regularly meet human rights activists, visit detention centres, provide help to inmates, and thanks to these steps the problem of securing human rights in the Chechen Republic does not ride high on the international organizations' agenda," he said.

Nukhazhiyev added that the commission for human rights in Chechnya now mostly deals with issues of social character. Security and kidnapping problems have almost been resolved. In the ombudsman's opinion, this is the main achievement of the last year.