New York: In a move to punish families of absconding young men suspected of supporting the insurgency in Chechnya, at least a dozen homes have been set ablaze since midsummer, a media report claimed today, citing residents and a local human rights organisation.

The burnings have been accompanied by a programme, embraced by Chechnya's president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, that has forced visibly frightened parents of suspected insurgents to appear on television and beg their sons to return home, the New York Times said. If you do not come back I will never forgive you, it quoted one father, Ruslan Bachalov, saying to his son on a recent broadcast. I will forgive the man who will kill you. I have no other way out, he added.

The authorities and the president demand that I bring my son back. In the arson cases, the paper said attack has followed the same pattern. The families have been awakened by men in uniforms and black ski masks who have herded residents outside and then torched their homes. Many of the attacks have been accompanied by stern declarations that the homes were being destroyed as punishment, it added.

Residents and the human rights organization were quoted as saying that the impunity was unsurprising, because the arsonists appeared to be members of the police. The pro Kremlin Chechen government said it knew nothing about the burnings, the paper said. We have no information about what you are talking about, so we cannot help, a spokesman for Kadyrov said to a query from a journalist.

The burnings, the Times said, have occurred in several districts or towns including Alleroi, Geldagan, Khidi Khutor, suggesting that the arsonists have been operating with precise information and with a degree of impunity in a republic that is crowded with police and military units.

Source : PTI