Week 5: Russia’s Version of Four Deaths Disputed

Summary: The following article, Russia’s Version of Four Deaths Disputed, was published on the 15th of February in the New York Times. Last Monday, a human rights group called Memorial, reported the death of four innocent civilians. This attack occurred in Ingushetia, a region bordered Chechnya. Ingushetia’s leader, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov apologized publicly for the four “unfortunate deaths” and gave their families compensation money. Russian authorities had said that these civilians were killed during the cross-fire of recent operations against Islamic militants in the North Caucasus region of Russia. This is not the case. These four people were found to have multiple gun shot wounds and knife wounds. The Memorial human rights group conducted several interviews with witnesses of this occurrence. The witnesses stated that those four people were abducted, tortured, and killed right in front of the witness's eyes. The Russian authorities had disputed the truth. These people were clearly not the victims of a cross-fire. The Russian authorities also disputed the accusation, made by the EU, that they had seriously violated human rights violations during the two Chechen wars. Lastly, Imram Ezhiev, a Chechen human rights activist and head of the Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship, said in an interview “Forces kill civilians regularly, but it is rare for authorities to admit to it.”

Correlation: This article correlates to a few concepts learned in comparative government. Firstly, it corresponds inversely to transparency, legitimacy and corruption. Citizens are randomly being killed and the authorities won't admit it. Why is this? They don't want to become transparent and display their faults and weaknesses to the entire country. The authorities fear that admitting their mistakes will decrease the legitimacy of the government. Also, the government is displaying signs of corruption due to the fact that a country's own government is willing to blatantly lie about obvious deaths in order to protect their reputations. Lastly, this article correlates with globalization. The EU has blamed Russia for violating human rights which in turn creates a tense relationship between the EU and Russia. Russia will become less and less wanted in the EU if it continues showing signs of corruption. Due to Russian's dishonest tendencies, it will continue having difficult getting along with it's near abroads and other countries.

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Photo Credit
(The photo is of Southern Chechnya.)