Program #402
"Chechnya"
Host: Charlayne Hunter-Gault
TRT: 26:45
May 1, 1996

V.O. ANNOUNCE: Principal funding for "Rights & Wrongs" has been provided by The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Open Society Institute. Globalvision presents "Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault.
This week, the human rights nightmare in Chechnya with footage never seen before. (gunfire) And the mystery of a humanitarian aid worker who disappeared trying to end the nightmare.

ARYAN NEIER (V.O.): I regard him as very much of a hero. Fred was the sort of person you meet once in a lifetime.

V.O. ANNOUNCE: Globalvision presents, "Rights & Wrongs," Human Rights Television.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: When Russia's Boris Yeltsin announced an end to Russian military operations in Chechnya, he said little about the consequences of the war, or the gruesome massacres of civilians. Atrocities against civilians are a growing phenomenon of war, dating back to the late 1960's, when American troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai, and up through Bosnia and Rwanda.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): But what happens when there's a massacre that almost no one knows about? Look at this. This is footage shot on home video inside the former Soviet Republic of Chechnya in March 1996, and brought to "Rights & Wrongs," by Buddhist monks who have joined Russian mothers in protesting a war that we know little about.

MONK, JUNSEI TERASAWA: It is really a tragedy that the whole world didn't see what happened here.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Human Rights Watch has accused both the Russian troops and the Chechen fighters of grossly violating humanitarian norms and the laws of warfare. The majority of the victims, they report, have been civilians caught in the crossfire.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Analysts suggest that Yeltsin's peace plan, the latest of many, may have had more to do with upcoming elections than any second thoughts about the war's effects. This week, "Rights & Wrongs" opens a window into the Chechen conflict in a way you've rarely seen. But first, the human rights background.

(Buddhist chanting)

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): March 1996: two Buddhist monks demonstrate outside the United Nations to focus attention on massacres half a world away. One of them has just flown in from Chechnya with an urgent appeal.

MONK, JUNSEI TERASAWA: I came here to bang the door of the United Nations and to break the official silence of these organizations on the mass killings which taking place.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Meanwhile, in the Chechen countryside, lists of the missing are being compiled. An investigator for Russia's principal human rights group, Memoriale, reads the names of the dead. He works with a man considered to be a legendary dissident, who resigned as Russia's Human Rights Commissioner to protest the brutal conflict, Sergei Kovalev.

(speaking Russian)

TRANSLATOR V.O.: I became convinced there was no sense in my continuing, that the position of the administration could not be corrected from within the administration.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): A million people lived in Chechnya, an area in the Caucuses 1,000 miles from Moscow. The war has forced more than half a million people to flee their homes.

LUDMILLA THORNE (V.O.): It is very much of a human rights conflict.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Russian-born Ludmilla Thorne monitors Chechnya for Freedom House, a human rights organization.

LUDMILLA THORNE: Here I have a copy of the Russian Constitution, which was voted on by all of the Russian citizens on December 12, 1993. And article 20 here says, "Everyone has the right to life." Article 22 says here, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and personal inviolability." Now President Yeltsin pushed for this constitution. He got it, but he is violating his own constitution.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): The Russian government declined to respond to this specific charge, but earlier blamed the Chechens for igniting a conflict that's simmered for over a century. This crisis started after a Soviet general of Chechen origin, Dzhokar Dudayev, proclaimed independence from Russia in 1991. Russia was reportedly also concerned about the security of an oil pipeline that runs through the territory. The Chechen demand for self-determination clashed with Moscow's insistence on its national sovereignty. Russians branded the Chechens "bandits with Mafia links."

LUDMILLA THORNE: Yes. Chechnya had tremendous human rights violations, and the Mafia was entrenched there, but not anymore than in Moscow, believe me. But this gives no right, no right to President Yeltsin just to destroy the entire country.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): No one agrees on just how many civilians, Chechen fighters, or Russian soldiers have died. As many as 50,000 may have perished. Sergei Kovalev protested directly to President Yeltsin about all of these casualties.

(speaking Russian)

TRANSLATOR V.O.: You ask what the reaction was of the officials.
There was no reaction, simply silence. The President basically limited himself to a single sentence. "Your point is understood, and will be taken into account."

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): The Russian army has sought to keep reporters out of the war zones, but this footage shot with a hidden camera by a Russian woman in march 1996, shows how the town of Surnovotsk was obliterated.

(women screaming and crying)

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): The Russian government says that it is promoting peace, and Boris Yeltsin has announced several peace plans, including a cease-fire. But the fighting has continued, and the Chechens, who have been fighting for independence for so long, are believed unlikely to surrender their cause.

LUDMILLA THORNE: I Think the Russian people will have gained a huge lesson from the Chechnya tragedy. Hopefully it will induce them to demand from their elected representatives that such a tragedy can never happen again, that you cannot solve a conflict by the military means. It can only be done politically through negotiation.

V.O. ANNOUNCE: You are watching "Rights & Wrongs," Human Rights Television.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Most of the TV coverage of this war focused on the Russian air assault on Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. But horrible images of destruction often obscure as much as they explain. For example, many of the 25,000 people killed there were not Chechens at all, but elderly ethnic Russians who had moved to Chechnya under Communist rule and were far from their original homes. Chechnya is still largely a rural society, with a long history of resistance to Russia, dating back to the days of the Czars. Our insider coverage comes from Thomas Goltz, an American reporter-turned-video-cameraman, who lived in the small town of Samashki. Here's his video diary, shot in a town that would later be blown to bits when the Russian army decided it had become a center of resistance.

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): Who could predict that this small town on the plain, so nondescript and traditional, would later become a battleground? The streets were inches deep in mud, and there seemed to be more animals than people. Most of the residents were farmers and small craftsmen, people who were less consumed by a burning nationalism than a desire to get along in their simple lives with minimal outside interference. The village elders, known as the Iztarika, commanded great respect and kept local traditions alive.

(singing and chanting)

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): Entertainment revolved around a coffee shop located in the home of a blacksmith named Al-Khazur. Losers at card games were obliged to perform a ritual I'd never seen before: the duck dance. Women played an active role in village affairs, especially when the Russian army began to threaten the town.

(speaking)

TRANSLATOR V.O.: You men must do your job and fight!

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): At first, Samashki tried to stay neutral and keep out of the war, but the Russians would not let them, and insisted on shipping weapons by train through the town. When the people refused early in 1995, the Russians attacked, shooting up some houses, killing several people, and wounding many. But rather than submit to brute force, the town mobilized to defend itself. The majority of the defenders were either old men or boys who used hunting rifles to drive off tanks, capturing weapons left behind. Heavy machine guns from armored personnel carriers and tanks were repaired and customized by Al-Khazur for use against helicopter gun ships and heavy armor. The local farmers, artisans, and even intellectuals soon became militiamen. One spoke English.

CHECHEN MAN: Before the war, I just finished at pedagogical institute last year, in summer. I'm a historian by profession. When we say hello or when we say good-bye, we say, "be free, come free, stay free," because for us, for Chechens, to be free, it means everything in life.

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): Surprisingly, this rag-tag militia was very disciplined. While some watched the roads, others purchased mines from Russian deserters and planted them in the potato fields surrounding the town.

(speaking)

TRANSLATOR V.O.: These are Russian mines, and we're using them against the Russians themselves.

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): The man who galvanized the community was a farmer named Hussien Jovadhanl. Like most Chechens over the age of 40, he was born and raised in distant Khazakstan. The reason is tragically simple. During the last great convulsion in 1944, Stalin expelled the entire population to Central Asia. Half died en route. The next generation was born in exile.
The Vusal, or deportation, is a date carved into the minds of all Chechens who swear that it will not be permitted to happen again. Hussein led a small group of volunteers-- his younger brother Usam, his cousin Shirvani, two shepherds named Hammed and Sela, and another man called Ali. Bringing up the rear was his 16-year-old nephew, Soltan. Together they made up the core of Samashki's defense. When Stalin ordered the Chechen history be erased, he meant it. In Samashki, the tombstones of the ancient cemetery were dug up and used to build the local hydro-station. For Hussein Jovadhanl, understanding this was a life-altering experience.

TRANSLATOR V.O.: When we were kids, we used to play on the rotator, to see who could get it spinning the fastest. How could we know that we were playing on the graves of our elders? Who could imagine they could destroy a cemetery and use the stones like that?

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): Hussien and his small band vowed to keep the Russians out, but the defense of the farm town in the plains seemed like an impossible task. Samashki was surrounded, and the Russian commander insistent. Another train was on its way, this one supposedly carrying humanitarian aid. "Let it through," the Russians demanded. But Hussein and his men knew what the train really carried: more weapons for Russian attacks on positions to the south. The only way to stop the train was to sabotage the tracks, and then keep the Russians from repairing them. It became a deadly game of hit and run. Moving his heavy machine gun around outlying fields to give the impression of having more men and equipment than he really had, Hussien stopped the train, and even managed to trick approaching Russian columns to fire at each other, and thus destroy themselves.

(machine-gun fire)

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O. IN FIELD): What we're looking at is an armored train with all sorts of weapons aboard it, destined for Grozny. In addition to these support vehicles, which include attack helicopters, it's carrying at least two or three P.T.R.'s and allegedly a tank.

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): Incredible as it may sound-- a handful of men against an entire armored column- the tactic worked. The train was forced to turn back. Nothing enraged the Russian military more than humiliation at the hands of farmers. The Russian response was a daylight attack on the town itself, spearheaded by the one weapon for which the Chechens had no effective answer: helicopter gunships. Jet aircraft soon screamed over the muddy streets of Samashki, dive-bombing farmers and cows.

THOMAS GOLTZ: The waiting is over. As you can hear, Samashki is now being hit, both around the railway station, as well as on the outskirts of town. We're taking hits here and there.

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): From their positions behind houses and barns, and his men fought off the assault. The defenders prayed and vowed to continue their fight.

(chanting)

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): In a dance of remembrance, or Zikurl, they recalled those who had fallen for the cause of independence over the last 150 years. Now the Russian command adopted a new tactic: to confuse and divide the people. First they would come in and negotiate the demilitarization of a village with local elders. The elders would then put pressure on the militant defenders to leave. Then, in a double-cross, without warning, the Russians would destroy the village anyway. Speaking through the Imam, or religious leader appointed during the soviet period, the Russian commander gave his personal guarantee that nothing would happen to Samashki if the town submitted. The elders would surrender a token number of weapons, but keep a police force. Heated debate ensued.

(elders speaking)

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): But the elders had spoken, and the only thing for the militants to do was to pack their bags and melt away, leaving Samashki exposed and defenseless. Samashki braced for the worst, but then the unexpected happened. A group of very brave anti-war activists, Russian mothers looking for their soldier sons, accompanied by Buddhist monks, managed to break through the lines, demanding peace. After the marchers left, the battle resumed with a new ferocity. For three days and nights, the town was pounded by long-distance artillery and helicopter gunships. Then, special ground troops moved in for mopping-up operations, and that is when the real terror began. Samashki was sealed off from the world. Even the International Red Cross was refused access, in direct violation of Russia's international commitments. I was trying to safeguard my tapes, but I sensed the Russians didn't care. One commander told me, "I bet you've got some very good footage." And then he smiled. I had covered the Russian troops as well as the Chechens and got a sense of their demoralization, even despair. Most, but not all, said they were just following orders. When the first survivors managed to trickle out, they told blood-curdling stories of drunken, doped-up soldiers on rampage, killing old men, women, and children.

TRANSLATOR V.O.: Bodies! Bodies everywhere!

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): As people hid in basements, special forces made house-to- house searches, dropping hand grenades into cellars, blasting at survivors with flame-throwers, and turning the bodies of young girls into ash. Almost a week after the horror began, the first international observers to enter Samashki found bodies still lying unclaimed in the streets or being brought into the local morgue. Not one body belonged to a known militant. The massacre was confirmed afterwards, when Russia's then Human Rights Commissioner, Sergei Kovalev, showed up to investigate and made his findings public.

TRANSLATOR V.O.: All the males were escorted by guards with dogs to prisoner camps. They were tortured by electric shock. They were bitten by trained dogs. Our mission published a book on what happened in Samashki with a great deal of documentation. We can state these facts with assurance.

(chanting)

THOMAS GOLTZ (V.O.): For the shocked and grieving people of Samashki, the war had come and washed over them like a deadly wave. But the conflict in Chechnya was by no means over. In towns and villages to the south, the Russians continued to push forward, driving militants and refugees ever deeper into the towering Caucuses Mountain range. Time and again, they would open negotiations with village elders, only to go back on their word. Even after President Boris Yeltsin's latest peace plan, the litany of death and destruction that has continued for 17 months goes on and on. Ochkoy Martan, Bahmut, Chiryort, Shatoy, Surnovotsk, Pidino, and then this March 1996, Samashki-- again. As the old Caucuses proverb has it, "When will the bloodshed cease in the mountains? When sugarcane grows in the snow."

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CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Many people have died in Chechnya, but one man's disappearance prompted international attention, perhaps because it's still a mystery. His name: Fred Cuny, a risk-taking American humanitarian aid specialist who worked with the Open Society Institute, one of the funders of "Rights & Wrongs." Cuny appeared in a "Rights & Wrongs" story two years ago. His reputation as a human rights hero prompts this look back.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): It needed a big plane because it was a big idea: building a water system in Dallas, Texas, and then flying it over to Bosnia to help restore services to Sarajevo that had been destroyed by Serb shelling. Texans are famous for thinking big, but Fred Cuny was known for turning big ideas into creative projects, with funding from financier George Soros. Aryah Neier runs the Soros Foundations.

ARYAH NEIER: Fred figured out how to put in a new water system using culverts that were left over from the Austro-Hungarian empire that hadn't been used since then. And the thing he took the greatest pride in of all was how fast the planes could be unloaded.

FRED CUNY: We've got to get in down on the first couple of runs to under 20, and then certainly, by the last, you know, three-quarters, we need to get it down to around ten minutes or less.

ARYAH NEIER (V.O.): He practiced in order to get them off in record time.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Cuny worked in 30 war zones over a quarter of a century. We first met him in the summer of '93, when he was based in Sarajevo.

FRED CUNY: For the last three weeks, we've been under a blockade from the Serbs. It's virtually shut down the town. We've not had gas. We've not had water. We've not had electricity. They have prevented diesel fuel, which runs the auxiliary generators, the water pumps, and so forth from entering the city.
And so virtually all the life in the city has been severely curtailed.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): When the war erupted, Cuny was dispatched to see what could be done. In February '95, between trips, he told us about the war's intensity.

FRED CUNY: The height of the... of the attacks on Sarajevo in January and early February of '93, '94, the highest count of incoming shells that the U.N. recorded was about 3,500 in one day. Human rights monitors and other groups operating in Grozny at one time counted 4,000 per hour coming into the city.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Once again, Cuny's experience on the ground led him to speak out, to question world indifference.

FRED CUNY: As a human rights advocate myself, I find it very disappointing that we've not been able to find the country willing to speak out on matters of genocide. Where have been the calls for a cease to the genocide in Chechnya? People don't want to use those words. They're afraid to face up to the human rights violations.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): As the war intensified, Fred Cuny mysteriously disappeared.

ARYAH NEIER (V.O.): Friends and colleagues and family of Fred went to the region itself to conduct the search from there.

CRAIG CUNY: We've heard, you know, every possible scenario, you know, from they've been killed, you know, several weeks ago, to they're alive and being held different places.

ARYAH NEIER: The family members believe that he was killed by Chechens who got the false impression that Fred was spying on them, that the Russian security services managed to... to pin a label on Fred, as if he were a spy, and that the Chechens fell for this.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): No one really knows what happened to Fred Cuny, but Cuny was well aware of the risks.

FRED CUNY: You know, when people are in need, and they're under fire, you've got to go where the people are and where the needs are. So, it's... Unfortunately, it comes with the territory.

ARYAH NEIER (V.O.): I miss Fred every day. I regard him as very much of a hero. I really regard Fred as one of the great people I've been privileged to know in my lifetime.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Thank you for watching "Rights & Wrongs." We welcome your comments and suggestions, and you can share them with us by mail and e-mail. Look for our home page on the world wide web. For "Rights & Wrongs," I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

(Buddhist chanting)

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