Chechnya: The Fight for Rights

After another brutal year in Chechnya, where hundreds of thousands of civilians and over 10,000 Russian soldiers have died in eight years of bloody conflict, six Chechens have won a potentially significant victory over the Russian armed forces. Their triumph came not on the streets of Chechnya's devastated capital, Grozny, nor in traumatized villages like Shaami-Yurt or Katyr-Yurt, but some 3,000 km away, at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. For the first time, the court agreed to hear lawsuits brought by ordinary Chechens against the Russian military under the European Convention on Human Rights, which Russia has signed....