Sitting in your warm european home, did you ever ask? Who is really responsible for that yellow pipe full of natural gas? The pipe that means you won't shiver?

Of course, you say, it is you who pays for it, so what is the matter? But that isn't my point. Your small payment is nothing compared to the price of your comfortable silence.  Think about the russian gas in your pipes. Russia needs european markets and Europe needs Russia's energy. You have a warm place to stay, while all the disturbing headlines about the Chechnyan war have dissapeared from newspapers and TV news. Europe is polite to Russia, not questioning the war anymore, at least not officially. Human right stuff-gone, mutilated kids pictures from land mines-gone, journalists writing about the war-dead or silent, and nobody raises any questions here. After all, the gas is flowing and we need it. Let's not make it a problem.  We have kids, right?  Keeping them warm means paying the price.  

Meanwhile, are we caring that the Russian government did not make any attempt to count civilian casualties in the war of 1994-96, nor after 1999? Many figures have been quoted, a figure of 250,000 dead in the two wars is sometimes repeated, but no one is watching closely and so there is no adequate substantiation of such a number. And so it goes, quietly you enjoy your heating and Europeans we warm ourselves over chechnyan bones. This is at the end of the chain, in between there is a little bit of geopolitics, a little bit of necessity of development and a little bit of reorganisation of forces and interests. It is all a function to hide the naked truth-Europe lives or dies by power of human resources, this time dead human resources and ones who die far away. So far away that we only see geopolitics and development and reorganised forces and interest from our warm cozy spots. Meanwhile, unable to secure justice domestically, hundreds of chechnyan victims of abuse have filed applications with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). And here you go: in 2006 the court issued landmark rulings on Chechnya, finding the Russian government guilty of violating the right to life and the prohibition of torture with respect to civilians who had died or been forcibly disappeared at the hands of Russia's federal troops. Hundreds of similar claims are pending before the court. But the cozy quiet continues.  

Try to imagine that this afternoon most in Europe will turn up the radiator heating on and heat will be coming from: Shamal Naskhidov 12 years, 5000Kj, Aslan Vasayev, 8 years, 4500Kj, Anna Politkovskay, 48 years, 7000Kj... Are you quite cozy yet?