Zura Bitiyeva

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Zura Bitiyeva (Bitieva) was a locally well-known human rights activist in Chechnya. On May 21, 2003, together with three other members of her family, she was summarily executed by a group of unidentified Russian special forces troops.

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[edit] Life

Zura Bitiyeva lived in a Chechen village of Kalinovskaya (Kalinovskaia). During the First Chechen War, she was actively involved in anti-war protests. In February 2000, during the Second Chechen War, she and her son Idris were arbitrarily detained and taken into the Chernokozovo filtration camp, infamous of torture, rape, and other abuses, where guards told her she would never leave alive. Bitiyeva, who tried to defend other prisoners, went on hunger strike and was released in a very ill condition.[1]

Her friends helped her go to Turkey, but once her health was slightly better, she went back to Chechnya and began collecting evidence of crimes committed against civilians in Chechnya. This evidence she submitted to United Nations and international human rights organizations. In the February 2003 Bitieva had been part of the group of women that demanded the opening of the mass grave site discovered near the settlement of Kapustino.[1]

[edit] Murder

In 2003, a group of 11-15 Russian-speaking troops (according to witnesses only four were masked) traveling in two UAZ-452 minivans broke into her family house in the middle of a spring night. The attackers bound, gagged and hooded Zura, her son Idris, her husband Ramzan and her brother Abubakar, and then shot them all in the back of the head (Zura was shot also in hands). Only her other son Eldard escaped death by hiding in time. The troops also stole a video recorder.[1][2]

In the same morning, the possibly same armed group killed two local men Turpal Ismailov and Islambek Gadiev in their houses.[1]

[edit] European Court of Human Rights

In June 2007, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Russian forces were responsible for the murder of Bitayeva and her family and Moscow was ordered by the court to pay €85,000 in damages to the victims' relatives.[3][4][5]

Dozens of similar cases are pending at the Strasbourg court. Zura Bitiyeva herself had filed a complaint against Moscow with the ECHR in 2000 for abuse while in detention, in then-second case from Chechnya, but she was killed before the ruling was issued.[6] Zura Bitiyeva's is not an isolated case and many people in Chechnya who have submitted cases of serious human rights violations to the ECHR have been subjected to reprisals, including being killed or forcibly disappeared.[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d Political Crime in the Kalinovskaia settlement
  2. ^ a b Russian Federation: European Court of Human Rights rulings on Bitiyeva and X v. Russia
  3. ^ Russia Ruled Responsible For Killings Of Four Chechens
  4. ^ Rights Court Says Russian 'State Agents' Killed Chechen Activist
  5. ^ Court rules against Russia in Chechen killing
  6. ^ Russia Convicted in Chechnya Killings

[edit] External links