Ella Pamfilova visited camps of Chechen refugees in Ingushetia

On September 4 a delegation of Russian human rights defenders led by Ella Pamfilova, the chairwoman of President Putin's Commission on Human Rights, paid a visit to refugee camps in Ingushetia, primarily to the Bella camp. According to Pamfilova, their aim was "to see for themselves what the current situation in the camps was."

Other participants included Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and Svetlana Gannushkina, the chairwoman of the human rights association "Civic Assistance".

The delegation spent about two hours at Bella talking to its occupants, who complained about being harassed by the Migration Service. "We used to live in the Satsita camp, then we moved to the temporary accommodation center in the Sernovodskoye village, and went on to Grozny. Then my husband was killed there. So I returned to the Bella camp where my daughter lived. But now they are expelling us from here as well," lamented Zuleykhan Magomadova.

And this was but one out of 50 similar complaints the delegation heard. They were also asked to deliver letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ingush President Murat Zyazikov. The letters are signed by many occupants of the camp, who are asking the presidents to solve the situation in the Bella camp. "We are afraid that the fate similar to that of the Iman camp will befall us," reads the letter.

The delegation also visited the Avtodor camp, close to Karabulak, where for over a month its occupants have been threatened and asked to leave the camp.

At the end of their first day in the Northern Caucasus region, human rights defenders met with representatives of various Chechen human rights organizations. The delegation was interested in the stance of local human rights defenders on the Moscow Helsinki Group's plan to send observers to the Kremlin-organized presidential election in Chechnya.

Representatives of the Chechen public that participated in the meeting sharply dismissed the Group's endeavor. "We only have to monitor human rights violations during this election; if we monitor the election itself, we will actually become actors in this farce that is called a presidential election," said Chechen National Rescue Committee Chairman Ruslan Badalov.