Russia's rights activists decried the failure of the...

Russia's rights activists decried the failure of the UN's top human rights body for the third year in a row to censure Russia over abuses in its war-torn republic of Chechnya. "We have returned to Soviet times in our approach to problems connected with human rights," Lyudmila Alekseeva, of the Helsinki Group, said on Moscow Echo radio.
"Democratic countries are condemning the situation in Chechnya and we find ourselves in the company of undemocratic countries, which is where logic dictates we belong," Alekseeva said.
On April 15, the 53-member UN Commission on Human Rights rejected a resolution that sought to "strongly condemn the ongoing serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in Chechnya."
Twenty-three countries -- including Russia, Cuba, China and much of Africa, -- voted against the resolution while 12 states -- European countries and the United State -- voted to pass. Eighteen nations abstained.
The vote meant that Russia effectively escaped further pressure to allow UN human rights specialists to probe the situation in Chechnya, as well as to open up the breakaway republic to aid agencies and human rights groups, which were key demands of the text.
"The Russian authorities did everything they could for the resolution to be rejected," said Human Rights Watch's Anna Neistat.
"But Russia should be worried by the fact that leading European countries and the US voted for it," he said. "These are the countries with whom Russia would very much like to be partners and they expressed in no uncertain terms their concern about what is happening in Chechnya."
The draft resolution, filed by the EU and backed by several central and Eastern European states that were once in the Soviet orbit, had listed "forced disappearances, extra-judicial executions, torture, ill treatment, arbitrary detentions and abductions."