Russian-Chechen Friendship Society

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS) is a non-governmental organization that monitors situation with human rights violations in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus^{[citation needed]}. It produces daily press releases on serious human rights violations^{[citation needed]}. The Society has its main office in Nizhny Novgorod. It produces newspaper Rights Protection jointly with the Nizhnii Novgorod Human Rights Society. RCFS received a human rights award by the International Helsinki Federation^{[citation needed]}.

The director of the RCFS, Stanislav Dmitrievsky, was convicted in February 2006 for inciting of ethinic hatred [1]. According to the allegation of Human Rights Watch, one of his articles was written by Aslan Maskhadov who just called for the international community to facilitate negotiations to stop the Chechen conflict. In another article, Ahmed Zakayev, according to Human Rights Watch just asked Russian voters not to reelect Vladimir Putin and alleged that the war was in only Putin's interests. The Society was closed by Russian authorities in October 2006 [2], but continue its work.

In January 2007, RCFS proposed to start a tribunal on war crimes and human rights abuses in Chechnya [3] based on historical precedents, such as the Nuremburg Trials, the International Court of Justice of the United Nations, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal.