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The return and hasty burial of the remains of Chechen fighters killed during the Second Chechen War did not bring solace to their loved ones, giving rise to questions about the fate of thousands who dis­ap­peared without a trace in the North Caucasus.

On the last day of December, as inhab­i­tants of Chechnya prepared to celebrate the New Year with hopes for a better life, the festive mood was marred by news from just outside Grozny, in the village of Dolin­skoye.

The remains of militants and civilians from Chechnya had been returned from a lab­o­ra­to­ry in Rostov, after being missing for 20 years. In 2014, they were excavated from a mass grave in an Orthodox cemetery in the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny. According to available infor­ma­tion, about 200 bodies had been buried there, all showing signs of a violent death. The bodies were from a period of bloody fighting in 1995 between Russian troops and Chechen sep­a­ratists under the lead­er­ship of Dzhokhar Dudayev, following which the Chechen capital fell to Russian forces. The new author­i­ties moved to clear the streets and basements of those killed and wounded during the fighting.

The remains excavated from Oktyabrsky were trans­ferred to the lab­o­ra­to­ry in Rostov for DNA analysis to establish their iden­ti­ties. From the 106 remains which reached Chechnya, only two families managed to find the bones of their loved ones. The rest were buried in a mass grave in Dolinskoye’s cemetery, after the religious ceremony of remem­brance was conducted. According to Islamic tradition, every bone was bathed and laid out in shrouds, which were later stuffed with cotton to make them resemble a human body. Then the grave was dug with a tractor.

The remainder of the 200 dis­cov­ered bodies remain in Rostov. Some were iden­ti­fied earlier and taken for burials. It’s possible that they include the remains of Russian soldiers and Russian-speaking inhab­i­tants of Chechnya.

They were brought to the cemetery and unloaded like building materials. All the remains were wrapped in black and white plastic bags and laid out on the snow; it seemed, by the reaction of many people, to be a symbolic mockery and disdain of human decency. Some residents even thought that the bags appeared festive.

After the news emerged and photos and videos spread over social networks, many Chechens abandoned their New Year cel­e­bra­tions.

‘This is the highest level of abuse of human beings and of the memory of their missing people’, Tamara, a woman from Grozny, says. ‘Why was it necessary to bring the remains on 31 December? I am sure that this was done delib­er­ate­ly to mock us. They don’t know how else to hurt us; we have become like shadows of human beings.’

The case was discussed actively on social networks; with many Facebook users reacting angrily.

‘I would like to ask — why no one asked how they were killed, where they were? The Germans are still inves­ti­gat­ing the murders committed during the Second World War and are still arresting the per­pe­tra­tors of these crimes. Why don’t they inves­ti­gate it? This is genocide. Why aren’t human rights organ­i­sa­tions or the inves­ti­ga­tion committee involved in this? They [the bodies] have not appeared from nowhere. It is necessary to inves­ti­gate’, says a user with the nickname Don Fare.

Many people do not under­stand why the remains were so quickly buried, and why the author­i­ties didn’t at least wait until more relatives of the slain could appear. People also appeared surprised that the author­i­ties did not even announce a period of mourning in the republic.

‘But why the rush, why was it necessary to bury the remains with tractors in such a hurry? It is necessary to declare three days of mourning (tezet) through­out the country, more than 100 people in one day for our small republic — this is too much. For us, they died today , because until now there was hope at least that somewhere, someone would show up, and that hope dis­ap­peared today’, says user Shamsudi Tashayev.

Some Chechens believe that this demon­strates the Russian author­i­ties’ attitude to the Chechen people and that the delivery of the remains on the New Year’s Eve was meant as a threat.

‘Is this a kind of, “do not misbehave, or we’ll repeat every­thing”? Many people are unable to move on because of the lack of clarity; many mothers are still looking for their sons. One night in our city, they took all the boys from across the street, who were sleeping peace­ful­ly at home, all 14–17 years old’, writes Facebook user Kheda Yasupova.

The General Alexander Lebed Peace­keep­ing Mission (MMGL) is engaged in inves­ti­gat­ing and lab­o­ra­to­ry analysis of missing residents of Chechnya. The organ­i­sa­tion operates with both Russian and inter­na­tion­al funding. The organisation’s official website contains a list of the names of 7,621 missing people from the conflict in the North Caucasus, whose fate remains unknown. This list is compiled on the basis of MMGL’s own research, databases obtained from official state bodies, min­istries, and depart­ments, as well as infor­ma­tion from public organ­i­sa­tions and private entities in the Russian Fed­er­a­tion. As a result of the MMGL’s work over recent years, the fate of 80 missing people has been estab­lished.

According to official data, there are more than five thousand people reg­is­tered as missing in Chechnya. This data cor­re­sponds to estimates from state-funded human rights activists. However, a number of inde­pen­dent organ­i­sa­tions believe that the real figure is several times higher. There are numerous well-known locations of mass graves, but due to a number of reasons, the remains buried in these have not been recovered or iden­ti­fied. These mass graves are often located near units of the Russian troops. According to reports from certain inde­pen­dent human rights defenders, one burial ground near the main Russian military base in Khankala, on the eastern outskirts of the Chechen capital, contains around 600 bodies.

The Chechen author­i­ties do not disclose infor­ma­tion about such mass graves. It is possible that they would prefer to give proper burials to the remains of the dead; however, in Chechnya, every­thing is done with an eye to the Kremlin’s.

Given the acuteness of the problem of missing people in Chechnya, and in accor­dance with the oft repeated expres­sion that ‘the war is not over until the last soldier and victim of war is be buried’ — European author­i­ties expressed a will­ing­ness to sponsor con­struc­tion of a lab­o­ra­to­ry in Chechnya to identify the remains found in mass graves. This was initially supported by the Chechen author­i­ties, however, they abandoned the idea shortly after without expla­na­tion.