Oksana Chelysheva, Spokesperson, Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, Russia

Bio: Oksana Chelysheva is the spokesperson for the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, the leading NGO in Russia that is trying to document human rights abuses and atrocities in Chechnya. The Society, founded in April 2000 has conducted its activities in the face of violence and intimidation. Many of its journalists in Chechnya have been beaten and even killed. In March 2003, the Society's director in Chechnya, Imran Ezhiev, was kidnapped for several days and subjected to torture until an international outcry prompted his release. The Society's director in Nizhny Novgorod, Stanislav Dmitirievsky, was severely beaten last year, and in March 2005 Oksana herself was threatened with death when a leaflet describing her as a Chechen whore and a terrorist was distributed in her neighborhood.

On October 9, two days after the murder of independent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the prosecutor in Nizhny Novgorod, where the Society is based, ordered the organization closed for allegedly violating Russian NGO laws. (Stanislav Dmitrievsky had been convicted of supporting extremism by publishing appeals for peace made by two Chechen leaders, Akhmad Zakaev and Aslan Maskhadov, and on basis of that conviction was barred from heading or even working for an NGO, which he continued to do.) The decision was appealed to the Russian Supreme Court, which ruled against the organization on January 23, but not before more than 100 intellectuals (including Francis Fukuyama, Noam Chomsky, and Andre Glucksmann) signed a statement not only supporting the group but symbolically becoming members of it.

Remarks: The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society has existed for seven years, but in the last two has come under unprecedented pressure from the Russian state. The aim of this campaign, which incorporated all state law enforcement agencies, was not only to destroy one organization, but to send a message to other NGOs. This strategy was perfected earlier during the elimination of the free media and the show trials of the dissident oligarchs.

Our aim has never been confrontation with the state. When our organization was founded, our desire was simply to oppose the propaganda of violence and intolerance that was a key element of the Kremlin's strategy. Efforts to oppose this program of numbing the Russian people's aversion towards violence may have seemed naïve, but we did manage to fulfill our task with at least some success. We regard the campaign of harassment launched against us as proof of the efficacy of our work. But Chechnya has become both a cause and a pretext for the slow dismantling of Russia's democracy. As other democratic voices have fallen silent, NGOs have become the last advocates of democracy in Russia and now have been drawn into conflict with the state, even against their own will.

However, merely noting the scale of human rights violations in Russia, or the crisis of the NGO sector, is no longer enough. We have disseminated more than five thousand dispatches, the overwhelming majority of which concern gross human rights violations perpetrated in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Our colleagues from other human rights organizations have revealed horrific facts of appalling crimes perpetrated by state agents-all to no avail. More than a dozen journalists have been killed during President Putin's rule. The most recent, Anna Politkovskaya, had repeatedly lambasted Russia for perpetrating numerous crimes in Chechnya. Murders of journalists and death threats against activists are not effectively investigated.

The world has remained silent and prefers not to raise the issue of Chechnya so as not to antagonize the Kremlin. I have heard a European diplomat complain that Vladimir Putin flies off the handle whenever Chechnya is mentioned. This reaction is not surprising from the head of state that provoked the crisis in the North Caucasus and now, having hypocritically joined the war on terror, seeks to cover his responsibility.

The increasingly belligerent tone of Mr. Putin's rhetoric, with his demands that the world not remark on his democratic backsliding and his accusations that other powers are attempting to establish a unipolar world, is easy to understand. The Kremlin has gotten away with its glaring misdeeds, and its confidence is fueled by the free world's ongoing failure to dispel the myth of Russia's phantom democracy. Russia is now indisputably an autocracy and few signs of real democracy survive. At the same time, in a particular Russian region of Chechnya, the Kremlin has established a regime with many features of totalitarianism. Ethnic intolerance thrives in Russia. Organized crime permeates all spheres of life in the country.

What will be the role of such a regime on the international stage?