MOSCOW, July 31, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Anti-Chechen discrimination has risen sharply across the Russian federation since last year's Beslan school hostage massacre, a Russian human rights watchdog said Sunday, July 31.

"The [Beslan] tragedy has been used to inflame interethnic hatred and revive enmity" in Chechnya and elsewhere in the Russian North Caucasus region, the respected Memorial organization said in a report distributed at a meeting of leading Russian and European rights activists, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The Beslan crisis began on September 1 last year and ended two days later in the deaths of 318 hostages, including 186 school children.

Responsibility for the hostage-taking was claimed by Chechen fighters led by Shamil Basayev.

The report documented numerous incidents of discrimination against Chechens ranging from administrative harassment to deprivation of employment, arbitrary arrest and physical abuse.

The small mountainous republic of Chechnya has been ravaged by conflict since 1994, with just three years of relative peace after the first Russian invasion of the region ended in August 1996 and the second began in October 1999.

At least 100,000 Chechen civilians and 10,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been killed in both invasions, but human rights groups have said the real numbers could be much higher.

An image from Russia's NTV channel shows an ABC’s reporter interviewing Basayev.

Memorial said the so-called international war on terrorism had been used by Russian law enforcement agencies as a pretext for actions directed at ethnic Chechens that were both illegal and immoral.

"Residents of Chechnya do not have even the minimal level of security. And there are today no alternative possibilities for the inhabitants of Chechnya to live elsewhere on Russian territory."

The conference, organized to discuss the overall human rights situation in Russia, was attended by the head of Memorial, Sergei Kovalyev, the head of the Moscow Helsinki group, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles, among others.

The Russian government's two chief human rights officials, Ella Pamfilova and Vladimir Lukin, had been scheduled to attend but announced at the last minute that they would not be present.

International human rights watchdogs said in a joint statement that rape, torture and extrajudicial executions by Russian troops have become everyday occurrences in Chechnya.

The Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation has further accused Russia of encouraging terrorism through its human rights abuses in Chechnya and rejected Moscow’s claims that the decade-long conflict was an internal affair.

US TV Banned

An image from Russia's NTV channel shows an ABC’s reporter interviewing Basayev.

In another development, Russia's defense ministry severed all contacts with America's ABC television following the network's interview with Basayev, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday.

"Today I tasked our press service with making sure that no serviceman in the defense ministry would have contacts with the ABC television company. We will continue to be open with the media, but this channel will not be invited to the ministry or be granted any interviews," he said.

The ABC "is now persona non grata, it is an outcast for the defense ministry," Ivanov said, adding that his personal feelings on the issue "can be defined with one word -- outrage."

Russia's foreign ministry had already voiced its own "strong indignation" to the US embassy Friday.

In his interview, thought to be the first face-to-face meeting with a journalist in years, Basayev said his attacks were motivated by the killing of so many Chechen civilians at the hands of Russian forces.

The interview, aired late Thursday on ABC's Nightline program, was said to have been filmed in the mountains of Chechnya.

Moscow has posted a 10-million-dollar (8.3-million-euro) reward for the capture of Basayev.

Speaking on Echo Moskvi radio station following Ivanov's announcement, the head of the Union of Russian Journalists, Igor Yakovenko, described the ministry’s decision as a "serious mistake."

He said the move would deprive the ministry of the possibility to get its own side of the story out to the public through the ABC channel, which he described as an "influential" Western television news outlet.