Activists accuse West of ignoring Russian human rights abuses

MOSCOW -- A leading Russian human rights group said Tuesday that the West was partly to blame for a rising tide of abuse, especially against civilians in Chechnya, because governments in the United States and Europe were turning a blind-eye in return for Russian support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

The Moscow Helsinki Group, a respected human rights watchdog, also blamed Western silence in part for what it said was continued police torture suspects.

The group also said the absence of a critical Western voice was allowing Russian authorities to ignore the increasing number of hate crimes against dark-skinned Russian citizens from the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The group criticized Western silence on those rights abuses as a cynical exchange for Russian President Vladimir Putin's backing for anti-terrorism operations launched after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

"The integration of Russia into the anti-terror coalition became a pardon of violations by western democracies," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who heads the group, said Tuesday. "This ally that we had in Western governments, the United States, European Union, Canada, is immeasurably less of an ally now."

In one example, she said German colleagues have reduced support for Russian human rights groups since Sept. 11, saying it's no longer the priority it once was.

Alexeyeva's colleague Tatyana Loshkina accused the United Nations of allowing Chechnya to "drop off the agenda."

International criticism of Russia had focused on the actions of federal troops in Chechnya. The war in the breakaway republic has worried human rights groups since its start nearly three years ago, and occupied a large chunk of the Moscow Helsinki Group's 470-page annual report on human rights released Tuesday.

"The human rights situation in the Chechen Republic can be characterized as disastrous," it said, appealing to the international community to renew its attention to the war.

It accused Russian troops of forming death squads that target Chechen men with no proven rebel ties, torturing civilians and ransacking Chechen homes.