Human rights groups boycott conference in Chechnya

MOSCOW, March 1 (Reuters) Major Russian and foreign human rights groups snubbed a Moscow-sponsored rights conference in Chechnya toay, criticising it as a sham designed to cover up abuses in the troubled Caucasus republic.

Rights groups have long criticised Chechnya's recently appointed Acting President Ramzan Kadyrov, a Kremlin-backed former rebel, for rights violations.

Two Russian military campaigns launched since 1994 to quell an independence drive by Chechnya have reduced to ruins the impoverished Muslim region bordering Georgia.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Helsinki Group rights organisation in Moscow, said the conference, to be chaired by Kadyrov and attended by Russian government officials, was an attempt by Moscow to give legitimacy to the new Chechen leader.

''I do not believe it is possible to improve the situation in Chechnya through contacts with Kadyrov,'' she told Reuters.

''Human rights organisations in Moscow refused to attend the event. Kadyrov is ... responsible for kidnappings and abductions of many innocent people whose bodies are being found with torture signs on their bodies, or not found at all.'' The only figure of international status attending the event was Thomas Hammarberg, the European commissioner for human rights. In Chechnya on a fact-finding mission, he criticised its leadership this week for using systematic torture in prisons.

Rights activists say hostage-takings by security forces have become widespread in Chechnya, while torture is systematic in secret prisons and illegal detention centres. Arbitrary charges are regularly brought against innocent civilians, activists say.

Kadyrov, the 30-year-old son of a murdered Chechen leader and a former rebel himself, controls the region backed by his own security forces and Russian troops.

Rights campaigners accuse his men of resorting to illegal arrests and torture. Kadyrov, promoted by Russian President Vladimir Putin to acting president this month, denies the charges.

Both Svetlana Gannushkina, a leading Russian refugee rights activist, and the Memorial rights group also said they were not attending the conference.

''I can't say I am deliberately boycotting it but I think that politics should not be mixed with human rights,'' Gannushkina said by telephone from Europe.

''We should first understand how to work with Kadyrov and only then hold human rights conferences.'' REUTERS AD ND1604