Samashki massacre
Samashki massacre | |
---|---|
Part of the First Chechen War | |
Location | Samashki, Chechnya |
Coordinates | 43°17′26″N 45°18′0″E / 43.29056°N 45.30000°E |
Date | 7-8 April 1995 |
Target | Chechen civilians |
Attack type | Massacre, mass murder, looting, arson, rape, war crime |
Deaths | At least 300 civilians[1][2] |
Perpetrators | Russia |
Motive | Genocidal intent[a] |
The Samashki massacre (Russian: Резня в Самашках) was the mass murder of Chechen civilians by Russian Forces in April 1995 during the First Chechen War. Hundreds of Chechen civilians died as result of a Russian cleansing operation and the bombardment of the village.[3][4][5] Most of the victims were shot in cold blood at close range or killed by grenades thrown into basements where they were hiding. Others were burned alive or were shot while trying to escape their burning houses. Much of the village was destroyed and the local school blown up by Russian forces as they withdrew. The incident attracted wide attention in Russia and abroad.[6]
The March 1996 United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) report said:
It is reported that a massacre of over 100 people, mainly civilians, occurred between 7 and 8 April 1995 in the village of Samashki, in the west of Chechnya. According to the accounts of 128 eye-witnesses, Federal soldiers deliberately and arbitrarily attacked civilians and civilian dwellings in Samashki by shooting residents and burning houses with flame-throwers. The majority of the witnesses reported that many OMON troops were drunk or under the influence of drugs. They wantonly opened fire or threw grenades into basements where residents, mostly women, elderly persons and children, had been hiding.[7]
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), this was the most notorious civilian massacre of the First Chechen War.[1] The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that approximately 250 civilians were killed.[8] According to Amnesty International[9] and HRW more than 250 people were killed, while the elders of Samashki stated that up to 300 residents were killed during the attack.[2]
Operation
The
Despite claims by Russian military sources, armed resistance in Samashki was not of an organized nature, as the main Chechen rebel forces left the village following the Russian ultimatum by Generals Antonov, Kulikov and Romanov, ending on April 6, 1995, to hand over the 264 automatic weapons supposedly present in Samashki (the villagers had handed in 11 automatic weapons). Before the ultimatum, Samashki had already been under siege for a prolonged period of time, and several failed storming attempts by the Russian forces had been undertaken since the beginning of the war in December 1994. However, the main force of more than 200[11] fighters left Samashki under the pressure of the village elders who wanted the village spared. The same elders and the village mullah were fired on by the Russians on the morning of April 7 while returning from the negotiations before the federal attack; the military command announced that it was the separatists who had shot at the elders. Nevertheless, a lightly armed village militia of some 40 self-defense fighters, all of them local residents, resisted the MVD and fighting ensued. A group of 12 fighters immediately broke out from the village, while the other groups put a Russian tank and two armoured personnel carriers (APCs) out of action before retreating as well. Both sides took casualties; two Russian troopers and four self-defense fighters have presumably been killed in combat. Several Russian armoured vehicles were lost during their advance due to land mines.[12][full citation needed]
The number of casualties among the MVD forces as released by the Russian commanders and spokesmen varies considerably, ranging from none dead and 14 wounded to 16 dead and 44 wounded,
War crimes
In 1996,
The male population of the village was detained indiscriminately in the hundreds and taken to the "
A Chechen surgeon, Khassan Baiev, treated wounded in Samashki immediately after the operation and described the scene in his book:[22]
Dozens of charred corpses of women and children lay in the courtyard of the mosque, which had been destroyed. The first thing my eye fell on was the burned body of a baby, lying in fetal position... A wild-eyed woman emerged from a burned-out house holding a dead baby. Trucks with bodies piled in the back rolled through the streets on the way to the cemetery.
While treating the wounded, I heard stories of young men - gagged and trussed up - dragged with chains behind personnel carriers. I heard of Russian aviators who threw Chechen prisoners, screaming, out their helicopters. There were rapes, but it was hard to know how many because women were too ashamed to report them. One girl was raped in front of her father. I heard of one case in which the mercenary grabbed a newborn baby, threw it among each other like a ball, then shot it dead in the air.
Leaving the village for the hospital in Grozny, I passed a Russian armored personnel carrier with the word SAMASHKI written on its side in bold, black letters. I looked in my rearview mirror and to my horror saw a human skull mounted on the front of the vehicle. The bones were white; someone must have boiled the skull to remove the flesh.
Aftermath
Up until April 10, villagers were not permitted to take out their wounded, while doctors and ICRC representatives were denied entry to the closed-off village (the Red Cross was authorized to enter only on April 27);[23] consequently, at least 13 of the wounded people died from lack of medical aid. From April 10 to 15 only Chechen women were allowed to go either way through the military cordon outside of the village. When Western reporters were allowed into Samashki for the first time since the assault on April 14, they found the village "littered with decomposing bodies."[24]
Reaction
At around the time of the incident,
Member of the
The brutality displayed in Samashki by Russian MVD forces succeeded in terrorizing many in Chechnya. Soon afterwards, neighboring towns and villages
See also
- Novye-Aldy massacre
- Alkhan-Yurt massacre
- Bucha massacre
- Katyr-Yurt massacre
- List of massacres in Russia
Further reading
- Chechnya Diary: A War Correspondent's Story of Surviving the War in Chechnya by Thomas Goltz (sample)
- The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire by Khassan Baiev
Notes and references
Notes
- ^ According to State Duma member Anatoly Shabad and Moscow Times.
References
- ^ a b RUSSIAN FEDERATION Human Rights Developments, Human Rights Watch 1996 annual report Archived May 25, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Mothers' March to Grozny, War Resisters' International, June 1995 Archived August 21, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "The "Cleansing" Operations in Sernovodsk and Assinovskaya Were Punishment Operations".
- ^ Binet, Laurence (June 2, 2016). "War crimes and politics of terror in Chechnya 1994-2004".
- ^ "Chechnya: Even "normalization" is halted - Russian Federation".
- ^ By All Available Means: The Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs Operation in the village of Samashki: 1. Preface Memorial Archived February 6, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ The situation of human rights in the Republic of Chechnya of the Russian Federation - Report of the Secretary-General UNCHR Archived February 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Wounded Bear: The Ongoing Russian Military Operation in Chechnya, GlobalSecurity.org, August 1996 (Foreign Military Studies Office)
- ^ RUSSIAN FEDERATION Brief summary of concerns about human rights violations in the Chechen Republic[permanent dead link] Amnesty International
- ^ Cluster Munitions Use by Russian Federation Forces in Chechnya, Mennonite Central Committee, 2000 Archived May 13, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c Russians' Killing of 100 Civilians In a Chechen Town Stirs Outrage, The New York Times, May 8, 1995
- ^ (This is the account of the attack according to the investigation by the Russian human rights group Memorial, based on the interviews with survivors and the examination of the village by the activists.)[citation needed]
- ^ By All Available Means: The Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs Operation in the village of Samashki: 7. CASUALTIES AMONG SOLDIERS AND OMON Memorial Archived March 14, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Адамишин Виктор Михайлович
- ^ By All Available Means: The Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs Operation in the village of Samashki: 6. THE MVD OPERATION TO TAKE SAMASHKI Memorial Archived February 6, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ PR victory fades in fog of Chechen war, The Independent, April 20, 1995
- ^ a b Russians `kill 250 Chechen civilians', The Independent, April 13, 1995
- The Jamestown Foundation, May 5, 1995 Archived June 25, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 0-8157-2497-7.
- ^ RUSSIA: PARTISAN WAR IN CHECHNYA ON THE EVE OF THE WWII COMMEMORATION HRW Archived October 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Russians `roasted' Chechen village, The Independent, April 14, 1995
- ISBN 0-8027-1404-8.
- ^ Chechnya : aid distributed in the village of Samashki, ICRC, May 9, 1995 Archived December 4, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Dissent on Chechnya: Word to the West, The New York Times, April 14, 1995
- ^ Why do the Chechens hate rule by Russia?, Socialist Worker, September 11, 2004 Archived May 22, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Defiant Chechens fight on in nuclear bunkers, The Independent, April 17, 1995
- ^ Eyewitness to Samashki, The Moscow Times, June 1, 1995
- ^ a b Russian strategy in the Chechen-Russo War of 1994-96 Archived January 2, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
External links
- Chechen Town's Survivors Live Amid Ashes and Rubble of Russian Attacks, The Washington Post, August 27, 1996
- Part 3 & part 4 of the interview with Thomas Goltz by University of California, November 7, 2003
- Escaping a Massacre, National Geographic Society, July 2005
- Samashki Massacre, ABC Evening News from Vanderbilt Television News Archive, April 13, 1995
- The Aftermath of a Massacre in Chechnya, 1997 documentary from Goltz
- By All Available Means: The Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs Operation in the Village of Samashki Archived August 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine by Sergei Kovalev's Observer Mission (Memorial website)