Grozny given facelift, but real terror remains

A decade ago central Grozny looked like post-war Stalingrad; now it looks like somewhere in Belgium.

Here, in the middle of the troubled North Caucasus region, is a city lined with new, brightly coloured buildings, and freshly-paved, tree-lined walkways.

But this sense of prosperous provincial idyll is a facade. It's at a pleasant cafe that I meet Svetlana Bazhayeva. She fiddles with her headscarf and talks quietly about the events of the past two months. The 51-year-old Bazhayeva raised her twin sons, now 25, and her two nephews, the sons of her sister who came from a village where there were no schools.

She was a teacher of Russian language and literature at a local school, loved so much by all her pupils that the school nominated her last year for the Putin Prize for Russia's best teachers. She won, and received a cash prize of 100,000 roubles.

But on June 18, everything changed. One of her nephews, Adam, was walking down a central Grozny street, when police stopped him and asked to see his documents, a routine request. As the policemen were checking his passport, shots rang out. A policeman was killed instantly, and Adam was also shot in the arm. He was wounded and fled to a nearby house where a woman bandaged his arm and helped him into a cellar. But his escape was short-lived. Later, police and special forces found him, and killed him by throwing grenades into the cellar.

Despite the fact that there is clear evidence that the policeman was shot in the back, and it looked like a case of an intra-police feud, it was announced that Adam was an insurgent who had shot the policeman and was then shot himself.

Then, the police, sensing an opportunity to boost their quota of "liquidated terrorists", decided to go after the rest of the family. Svetlana's husband was taken in for questioning that night and asked where his sons and nephew were. He was beaten up and sent home badly bruised, without saying anything.

The family sent him and the three boys into hiding, but the search was relentless.

Berlana Bazhayeva, Svetlana's sister and Adam's mother, was taken to the morgue two days later to see her son's dead body.

"Here's the dog who killed one of our officers," said the policeman accompanying her. "Why are you crying?" She was urged to renounce her son to a television camera, but she refused.

Now, armed police and militias regularly turn up to Svetlana's house, threatening the family and demanding to know where the remaining boys are. Svetlana is followed everywhere. In six weeks, she had lost her nephew, seen her husband beaten up, sent four relatives into hiding and lost her job. Svetlana's story is extreme, but similar tactics are used on a regular basis in Chechnya.

Ramzan Kadyrov, a 32-year-old former rebel, was given the reins of the republic in 2007 in what many saw as a Faustian pact. The Kremlin knew that Kadyrov was not a pleasant man, but handed him control and vast financial reserves, in return for keeping Chechnya part of Russia and out of the headlines. Now, most of the bloodshed in Chechnya appears to come from Government-backed forces, directed against alleged rebels and their families, or against rights workers.

Last month, Natalya Estemirova, a key figure from Memorial, the region's best known rights organisation, was kidnapped from outside her house and executed. Earlier this week in Grozny Zarema Sadulayeva, the head of a children's charity, was abducted with her husband. Both were killed.

Where Kadyrov fits into the everyday violence is unclear.

At the very least he has created a climate where such killings can occur without fear of reprisal.

- INDEPENDENT