| General Discussion Undecided where to post - do it here. |
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12-03-2008, 01:49 PM
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#1 |
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 Mother Russia - A terrorist ??
Is Russia the good guy
 Nope. |
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12-03-2008, 03:15 PM
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#2 |
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According to a recent Economist article, 30% of all Russian male deaths can be attributed, directly or indirectly, to alcohol. For female deaths the figure is 19%. What a crummy country.
Yes, this is irrelevant, but I figure we've had plenty of posts on Russia's state-sponsored thuggery, and not enough on Russia's spectacular alcohol problem. |
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12-03-2008, 07:34 PM
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#4 |
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Originally posted by onodera
Also, that's the first time I've heard of that You can't be serious. Do you have any semblance of a free press over there? Anyway, the pile of links above gets pretty detailed, but for the three most egregious examples, just google "Novye Aldi," "Alkhan-Yurt," or "Staropromyslovski." They make My Lai look like a picnic. |
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12-03-2008, 07:48 PM
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#5 |
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Originally posted by onodera
However, I have a link for you to read in the meantime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre Hell, at least they managed to prosecute two dozen perpetrators and convict a commanding officer. Russia's investigations of war-crimes prosecutions in Chechnya? Mere paper tigers. Moscow created a purportedly independent national commission headed by former Justice Minister Krasheninikov, an Office of the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Ensuring Human and Civil Rights and Freedoms in the Chechen Republic, and a State Duma Commission on Normalizing the Socio-Political Situation and Human Rights in Chechnya, but they are not allowed to subpoena evidence or witnesses, nor to submit evidence to prosecutorial authorities. And what about actual prosecutions? The Office of the Special Representative announced that only twelve Russian servicemen have been tried for murders committed in Chechnya, and the results of these trials have not been made public. Meanwhile not a single serviceman has been convicted for involvement in a forced disappearance, and there has not even been a single prosecution related to the three civilian massacres in Alkhan-Yurt, Staropromyslovski, and Novye-Aldi. In fact, the general in direct oversight of the troops in Alkhan-Yurt – Vladimir Shamanov – was personally awarded the "Hero of Russia" medal by Boris Yeltsin less than a month after the incident. How many My Lai perpetrators got accolades like that in the aftermath? Sources Human Rights Watch, “Memorandum on Domestic Prosecutions for Violations of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Chechnya”; available from http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/chechmemo-0213.htm . Human Rights Watch, “Last Seen: Continued “Disappearances” in Chechnya”; available from http://hrw.org/reports/2002/russchech02/ . Shara Abraham, “Chechnya: Between War and Peace,” Human Rights Brief 8, no. 2 (2001). Ian Traynor, “Moscow makes heroes of its war generals,” The Guardian; available from http://www.guardian.co.uk/yeltsin/St...194971,00.html . |
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12-03-2008, 08:03 PM
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#6 |
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No, there guys aren't terrorist. War criminals, yes, but not terrorists.
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12-03-2008, 08:18 PM
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#7 |
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Originally posted by onodera
Not made public? As far as I know, Arakcheev has been acquitted several times, and not by a Corrupt Military JudgeÂÂ*â„¢, but by different jury panels. Link? The source on those 12 was from 2005 so something might have changed since then, but I can't find anything online. Originally posted by onodera That's not even good English. Or Russian, as well. Actually "disappear" has been frequently used as an action verb for some time within the limited human rights context, and that usage is included in the dictionary, not that it matters. Originally posted by onodera How can you convict someone of disappearing a person? ... You can prosecute for murder, for kidnapping, but in all these cases you need either a body or a witness or a confession. If someone disappears, there's neither. How can you tell that was a crime? Why do you want to convict Russian servicemen of that? That was probably poor wording; in this context "disappearances" are meant to distinguish the apprehension (or kidnapping) and subsequent extrajudicial execution from killing of civilians in a combat zone. This doesn't necessarily mean there is no body, though there might not be one. Obviously there would be difficulties of proof without a body, though the combination of witnesses and documentation confirming that the victim was taken into custody by the accused, and the accused's lack of a believable explanation for where the victim was released, could be enough to establish a presumption that the victim was killed in custody. If you go to the ECHR Case Law Database and search for "disappearance and Chechnya," you'll find several cases that make that inference based entirely on surrounding circumstances (Bazorkina v. Russia is one good example). Granted, those were civil suits against the government itself rather than prosecution of individual servicemen, but a case could probably be made against them or at least their commanders since who has custody of whom is usually a matter of record. In any case, I just found the dearth of disappearance prosecutions only notable; obviously the low number of murder prosecutions and impotence of domestic investigations is far more important. Originally posted by onodera Yes, General Shamanov is ruthless, even brutal. I don't know if he was involved in ordering the massacre, but I guess he'd turn a blind eye to it. Ordering it and turning a blind eye are morally equivalent as far as I'm concerned. Sending the message that there are no consequences only encourages the conduct. Originally posted by onodera Also, picture: So? I'd be the first to tell you that the Bush Administration is guilty of willful ignorance at best or a curt nod at worst. Let's not forget that the second war was mostly in the aftermath of 9/11. In 1999 Bush as a candidate condemned Russia’s “bombing women and children and causing huge numbers of refugees to flee,” and threatened to cut off IMF and Export-Import Bank loans to Russia, while then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms called for punitive sanctions and Russia's expulsion from the G-8. Even after the election Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John Beryle held a friendly meeting with the exiled Foreign Minister of Chechnya, and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice showed commendable nuance in stating that “not every Chechen is a terrorist and the Chechens' legitimate aspirations for a political solution should be pursued by the Russian government.” In the late 1990s the Kremlin’s public relations machine had morphed its fight against the “bandits” of a dangerous “mafiocracy” into a broad crusade “to destroy global terrorism,” claiming Chechen separatists were intertwined with al-Qaeda. This convinced few outside Russia as the Sovietized Chechen Sufis had little in common with Wahabbi jihadists, not to mention the fact that Dudayev had himself fought them while a Soviet general in Afghanistan. Then 9/11 changed everything overnight. Putin declared that Russians and Americans “face a common foe” in Bin Laden as his organization was “connected with the events currently taking place in our Chechnya,” and enthusiastically joined the so-called “coalition of the willing” against the Taliban. Establishing the massive military presence in Central Asia needed to oust the Taliban would have gone best with Russian approval, plus Russian intelligence and contacts with the Northern Alliance proved crucial to our operations there. The single-mindedness of the War on Terror also made Bush's cronies blind to the complexities of the fragmented Chechen insurgency, which was (at least back then, not so much now) mainly made up of secular nationalists like Mashkadov who condemned the attacks of 9/11 and terrorism in general. At the 2002 G-8 Summit Bush simply said “President Putin has been a stalwart in the fight against terror,” and the same year Colin Powell bluntly stated that “Russia is fighting terrorists in Chechnya, there is no question about that, and we understand that.” The post-9/11 sea-change in the administration's stance on Chechnya is obvious and is inexcusable IMO, but so what? Why is it that any time Russia is criticized, the kneejerk reaction is "well yeah, but the U.S. did this!"? I've heard that canard out of Putin a half-dozen times, out of Serb countless times, and so far there's been two examples of the phenomenon on this thread, even though nobody here would be stupid enough to claim the U.S. has clean hands... |
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12-03-2008, 09:11 PM
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#8 |
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The adventures in Chechnya are pretty well documented and it's partially very nasty. War crimes, sure.
But the West is walking on weak ice these days. It is difficult for us to point the finger and say you can't do that, when we're looking for legal ways to do the same thing. I mean when crap happens, we say the system will take care of the rotten individuals. We know it isnt' true always, only sometimes. So I don't know, I don't think we can get a moral high ground here anymore. It all sucks pretty much. |
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12-03-2008, 10:23 PM
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#9 |
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Originally posted by onodera
Yes, if you're in the military and you're acting under orders, you're not doing anything wrong. The right thing is to obey. ...and that would make someone a war criminal. "I was just following orders" is not a defence to this (as was pointed out). |
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12-03-2008, 10:47 PM
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#10 |
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They may do things differently in Russia. 
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12-03-2008, 11:03 PM
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#11 |
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12-03-2008, 11:06 PM
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#12 |
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12-03-2008, 11:11 PM
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#13 |
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Nah, the thread was already Godwinized by Guardian (Post #3).
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12-03-2008, 11:15 PM
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#14 |
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Originally posted by Wezil
Nah, the thread was already Godwinized by Guardian (Post #3). Ah, so it was. Excellent. Then I can mention the Einstatzgruppen. Just following orders. OBEY  -Arrian |
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12-03-2008, 11:27 PM
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#15 |
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12-03-2008, 11:30 PM
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#16 |
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Yes, yes. The whole "just obeying the orders is a crime" thing was invented for the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, just so we, the Allies, would have a legal basis for prosecuting more Nazis and Japanese brass.
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12-03-2008, 11:41 PM
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#17 |
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Originally posted by onodera
Also, that's the first time I've heard of that, so I'll need some time to prepare a reply. However, I have a link for you to read in the meantime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre You're aware that that was a HUGE incident in the US when it became public and resulted in a large shift of US perception of the war? It was (rightly) the poster child of the antiwar movement. |
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12-03-2008, 11:48 PM
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#18 |
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Originally posted by Arrian
That's a blatant Godwin trap. -Arrian Except it's one of the few cases where the comparison to Nazis is 100% legitimate! |
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12-03-2008, 11:50 PM
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#19 |
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Originally posted by GePap
No, there guys aren't terrorist. War criminals, yes, but not terrorists. Actually, under the original definition of terrorism, they are the terrorists. Terrorism, originally, was something a state does to its own citizens. |
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12-04-2008, 12:04 AM
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#20 |
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Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles
Actually, under the original definition of terrorism, they are the terrorists. Terrorism, originally, was something a state does to its own citizens. On what basis do you say this? It has been my impression that Bakunin derived the Russian version of this word and doctrine in the 1800s. It is he who defined terrorism as a "attract their attention" kind of effort. While states can do it to their own citizens, the doctrine was derived by the anarchists to get the press and the Government to acknowledge their existance. Do you have another source (preferably not Wikipedia)? |
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