Z.G.: During the war, I had the chance to visit many international organisations. Does the muted reaction in Switzerland indicate that despite all the talk of human rights, in the final resort it’s money that talks? Swissinfo.ch: A controversial Chechen businessman has bought Neuchâtel football club. I think there needs to be an international verdict on this war. Until now no one has asked the people for forgiveness, no one has admitted being wrong. I want them to see the huge amount of work that was done by a small group of women, who, at the risk of their lives, went all over these towns and villages in Chechnya to collect these stories. I am sure that one day I shall be able to hand this archive over to my people. I am now working on the Chechen archive in Bern. Swissinfo.ch: And the world has now forgotten or just doesn’t care? Even today people can’t say what, because the policy of the current Chechen government is that it should be a war that left no trace. They dropped bombs, including forbidden bombs. This content was published on Apr 14, 2023We desperately need more attention, staff and funding to set up artificial intelligence (AI) governance systems, says Lê Nguyên Hoang.Īfter every war it’s the same: we build, we want everything to be restored. They are afraid of their neighbours – they might report them. Within the same family there are different views. After so much suffering, people have closed in on themselves. ![]() Swissinfo.ch: That’s like your parents’ experience? They are ready to live in fear of the authorities in the republic, just as long as there is no war. People want to forget the war, they don’t want to speak of it, or think about it. ![]() But how can we live in those houses when there is no stability, no work, when we are living in fear, and can’t say a word against what is going on? Houses are now being built in Chechnya and sports and culture are being developed. Do you think a Russian mother is happy that her son died in Chechnya? That she’s happy that her son fought there and came home embittered, unable to fit back into the society which deceived him? It brought so much suffering, to women and children and the wounded. There were ten years of war in the Chechen republic. G.Z.: What I am primarily involved in is peacemaking. Swissinfo.ch: So your struggle is not only for Chechnya? It’s a vicious circle that is hard to break out of. But to get the post in the first place he had to pay for it. The goal of every official is to make money from his post. Corruption at federal level and at local level. And the small national groups have no rights at all.Ĭorruption flourishes now more than it did in Soviet times. The Russian people are also enslaved by the system in which they now live. Switzerland is an attractive place to work and the country needs specialists. Why Switzerland needs workers from abroad But there are more than 100 national groups in the Russian Federation, and you can’t speak as if there was just one single people. Z.G.: I love the Russians, their music, their culture. Swissinfo.ch: Is one problem that Russians look down on the smaller nations of the Russian Federation? I saw the reality in Chechnya, and then I saw the reality in Moscow: people there knew nothing, didn’t want to know. I was living between Moscow and Chechnya. Z.G.: When the Chechen campaign started I was living in Moscow, I went first to collect my parents, and then went to see what was happening. Swissinfo.ch What happened when the first Chechen war started in 1994? I wasn’t brought up to hate Russians and I had Russian friends. My parents were afraid, so what happened was never mentioned. But one day when I was quite small I overheard them talking about events in our home village of Khaibakh in 1944, when the NKVD drove more than 700 people into a barn and set it on fire. My parents didn’t talk about what had happened, they kept it to themselves. My concern for human rights probably has its roots in my childhood. Zainap Gashaeva: In 1944 my parents were deported from Chechnya to Kazakhstan, which is where I was born. Swissinfo.ch: What is your background, and how did you get involved in human rights? ![]() On May 14 she was awarded the 2011 Somazzi prize, which is given to women involved in human rights and the protection of peace and freedom. ![]() She herself, having received numerous death threats, finally took the decision to leave, and has been granted refugee status in Switzerland. Several of her colleagues who spoke out against the wars, including the prominent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, have been murdered. Zainap Gashaeva tells swissinfo.ch that the current Chechen government wants the two devastating wars of 1994-2009 to be forgotten.
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