DATE=2/17/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=HEINLEIN - GROZNY Q&A
NUMBER=2-259248
BYLINE=PETER HEINLEIN W/LES CARPENTER
DATELINE=GROZNY - WASHINGTON
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: V-O-A Moscow Correspondent Peter Heinlein
is in the Chechen capital, Grozny. He was
interviewed by phone on Thursday morning by Les
Carpenter of V-O-A News Now in Washington.
TEXT:
HEINLEIN: It's the early morning hours (8 am)
and there is very little sign of life on the
streets of Grozny, except we now see the
Emergency Situations Administration truck pulling
out into the street. (It) is carrying supplies
to those people who remain here -- mostly in
basements, as they have during most of the war.
It's a quiet city now. There's not much
fighting. Overnight, we certainly heard a number
of bursts of machine-gun fire and loud
explosions, numerous flares and some indication
there are still some (rebel) fighters left in the
city. They told us yesterday that here in the
camp we're staying in, in the middle of Grozny,
there were two instances of snipers firing into
the camps. And, just now I'm hearing the
rumbling of an explosion. There's certainly some
tanks rolling around. But, life is quiet. There
are still several thousand civilians living here.
However, there's very little in the way of
provisions, other than what the Russian
Government is providing them. The Emergency
Situation Ministry here is operating a hospital.
In just a little while, they open the doors to
patients to come in. They say that they get a
fairly long line each day of people coming in to
ask for medication for their illnesses. Last
night, we found a couple of people in the
intensive care unit. Other than that, there
really isn't much in the way of medical care
available in Grozny.
CARPENTER: Peter, what are the Russians doing at
this point to restore city services? Are any of
them being restored?
H: No. "City services" is a term I'm afraid
isn't going to be used in Grozny for a long time.
The city has been destroyed. It's hard to
imagine - although it's been done to other cities
before: a city has been practically razed to the
ground and has been restored. But, in this case,
there is clear evidence the Russian military has
systematically gunned every building and made it
virtually inhabitable. It's going to be years
before city services of any magnitude (are)
restored here. Every tree is scorched. We
didn't see a street where the destruction wasn't
virtually complete. Some buildings are standing,
of course, but it looked as if every floor of
every building had been hit.
C: Peter, have you heard anything there from the
Russian headquarters that the fighting in the
south of Chechnya is now scaling up? Or, is it
scaling back.
H: Certainly, we have evidence the fighting is
intense. But, we don't have any first-hand
information from the Russian headquarters, at
this time. What we're getting is second and even
third-hand information and the troop movement we
could see just outside the military headquarters.
It's hard to tell. Reporters are mostly being
prohibited from anywhere around there. In fact,
reporters - except on government tours - are
being prohibited from coming to Grozny. We were
very fortunate to have met with an Emergency
Management team, yesterday. But, even now, our
movements are being fairly restricted.
C: There's been a lot of international
complaints about the human rights situation in
Grozny, in Chechnya, all over. Do you see any
evidence there that there are any human-rights
violations?
H: We have been talking to people from Human
Rights Watch about these filtration camps that
are in operation. Human Rights Watch has been
very diligent in talking to the witnesses -
people who have either come out of those
filtration camps or have been released or have
been ransomed - their families have come and
bought their way out. The stories that are
coming from these filtration camps of torture and
mutilation and beatings . . . We, of course,
can't get close. The locations are fairly well
guarded. We can't get anyplace close to them.
But, the stories coming out of them are truly
horrific. Human rights investigations are in
progress. Investigators are already talking
about war crimes.
NEB / WD-T / PLM
TEXT:
NEB/WTW/
a
17-Feb-2000 02:11 AM EDT (17-Feb-2000 0711 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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