Godlike Productions - News: Report Faults All Parties in War in Georgia

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Tuesday, January 6, 2009

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Report Faults All Parties in War in Georgia

New York Times

2008-11-19

MOSCOW — Russian, Georgian and South Ossetian forces failed to protect civilians, and in some cases singled them out for attack, during the war in Georgia, according to a report released Tuesday by Amnesty International.

The report calls for an independent investigation into “serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law” that Amnesty International contends were committed by all sides during the war in August.

The conflict has been muddied by exaggeration and prejudice from its first hours, said John Dalhuisen, one of the report’s authors. But he said, “The truth will out, eventually.”

Amnesty International, a London-based human rights group, studied satellite imagery of damage around the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and interviewed witnesses and victims during four visits to the region.

The report said that in attacking Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, on Aug. 7 and 8, Georgia fired Grad missiles that seemed to miss their targets and hit civilian areas. It also criticized Russia for bombarding Georgian territory later and for allowing South Ossetian forces to loot ethnic Georgian villages for weeks.

Both sides, the report concludes, used cluster bombs.

Russian and Georgian officials could not be reached for comment early Tuesday.

The report makes no attempt to determine who started the war, noting that “all sides have declared their actions to be ‘defensive,’ even when civilians bore the brunt of their military operations.”

Researchers in Tskhinvali concluded that Georgian forces had aimed Grad rockets at military targets — a Russian peacekeeper base, fuel depots and munitions stockpiles, among others — but that the targets were adjacent to civilian areas. The impact of the rockets had a radius of as much as 500 feet, and in some cases missiles struck a third of a mile away from what appeared to be their targets, the report said.

The researchers also found that several thousand civilians were in Tskhinvali the night of the attack, Aug. 7, and that 182 structures in the city were damaged, mostly in the first hours of the war.

Unlike the Georgian attack — described as “a fixed, localized incident that took place over eight hours” — the Russian bombardment that followed was sporadic and lasted for days, Mr. Dalhuisen said. The Georgian authorities commented on their military strategy to Amnesty International’s researchers, but Russian leaders did not.

The report found that Georgian towns, villages and civilians were hit during Russian bombing raids, sometimes “in the apparent absence of nearby military targets,” which would violate international law.

Russian infantry treated civilians in a disciplined fashion, but the Russians allowed South Ossetian forces to loot and set fires in the ethnic Georgian villages north of the separatist capital, the report determined. Amnesty International’s researchers “documented unlawful killings, beatings, threats, arson and looting” by armed South Ossetian groups, the report said.

“It is clear that the Russian authorities singularly failed in their duty to prevent reprisals and serious human rights abuses carried out by South Ossetian forces and militia units,” the report said. In South Ossetia in late August, it said, researchers observed “scenes of total destruction, with houses pillaged, burnt and many in ruins.”

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