Subject: re Russia: Report on Civilian Casualties in South Ossetia
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008
From: "Rachel Denber" <denberr@hrw.org>
[Rachel Denber is deputy director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch]
Some contributors on JRL and beyond are mistakenly attributing to Human Rights Watch an estimate of 44 civilian casualties during recent hostilities in South Ossetia. Human Rights Watch has never made such an estimate and I appreciate the opportunity to clarify HRW's approach to documenting casualties during the fighting in August.
Though the number of civilian dead and injured in a conflict is, of course, an issue of great importance, HRW's major concern in any conflict setting is to establish if and how civilians have been killed or injured and, more particularly whether this was the result of violations of international humanitarian law: the laws of war.
In August Human Rights Watch interviewed a doctor at the Tskhinvali hospital who said that the hospital received 44 bodies between August 6 and 11. Our researchers asked her, repeatedly and in different ways, whether it was possible that there were other bodies presented somewhere else, to other morgues, and she was adamant that if there were bodies to be presented, they would come to the morgue in her hospital only, as there was no other medical facility in the area. She also noted that the 44 bodies included both those of fighters and civilians. We presented this in our August 13 press release not as a comprehensive account of civilian deaths but as a doctor's report of the number of bodies brought to the Tskhinvali hospital.
We did not present this figure, or any other figure, as a comprehensive account because Human Rights Watch does not have the capacity to make a definitive estimate as to the number of civilian casualties. We were skeptical about estimates made public one day after the conflict started by high-level Russian government officials and by the authorities in South Ossetia, which ranged from 1500 to 2000. We were skeptical also because it was not clear how such figures were compiled, and because the range was inconsistent with the number of wounded civilians and militias registered at the Tskhinvali hospital. The same doctor reported that altogether 273 wounded were treated in the hospital. The media also cited figures in the hundreds on the number of civilians wounded; these numbers were provided by hospitals in North Ossetia. Doctors in several hospitals in North Ossetia told our researchers that many incoming patients wounded in the conflict zone had been first treated in the Tskhinvali hospital, hence there was some overlap with the 273, though the degree is not known.
We were concerned that the initial civilian casualties figure provided by Russian and Ossetian officials was influencing the public in South Ossetia. Some of the local residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch justified the torching and looting of the ethnic Georgian enclave villages by referring to "thousands of civilian casualties in South Ossetia," they had heard about on Russian federal TV channels.
The issue of civilian casualty figures is enormously controversial, in part due to the acute propaganda war that surrounds this conflict. Countless officials, journalists, and the like have asked us how many civilians were killed in the conflict. In response to these queries Human Rights Watch has emphasized that we do not have the capacity or expertise to count civilian casualties. We have questioned the initial 1500-2000 figure and the methodology used to arrive at it. We have emphasized that these were not reliable figures because it was not clear how such figures were compiled so quickly, as early as August 8 and 9, since as many have correctly pointed out, some of the dead in South Ossetia and throughout the region were initially buried in the courtyards by relatives or neighbors, and that therefore the task of gathering such figures is difficult and time-consuming.
In these interviews and conversations we do refer to the Tshkhinvali doctor's figure as well, always contextualizing in the manner described above: the number of bodies brought to that hospital from August 6-11. (In our August 13 press release, we pointed out that when we interviewed people in Tskhinvali and several outlying villages we asked residents about the number of civilians killed and wounded in their neighborhoods, and how they were killed. We relayed this not only because it was in and of itself important information but also because it made clear that we do not regard the hospital figure as comprehensive.)
We also reference the figures arrived at by Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General's office, which is investigating now 154 deaths (its first published figure was 133). We have always said that it was completely unclear whether the Prosecutor General's investigation is distinguishing between civilians and volunteer militias, and if so, how. The many men in South Ossetia who took up arms to defend their homes are not military, but they are regarded as combatants by international humanitarian law and as such should not be counted among civilian casualties. (The same issues are relevant to the list of 310 deaths compiled in South Ossetia by a commission of Russian and Ossetian public figures).
Human Rights Watch refers to these figures, but we do not cite any of them as a definitive number of civilian casualties. Likewise, we refer to casualty figures stated by the Georgian authorities of Georgian civilians with similar caveats.
Finally, we have always said that this is an area that clearly requires extensive research, as new information could reasonably come to light about deaths not reported previously, people who were assumed dead but were in fact missing and resurface, people who were inadvertently counted twice, and people who die from wounds inflicted during the conflict. The sometimes clinical and hotly disputed discussion of civilian casualty numbers should not for one instant diminish the fact that even one is a tragedy.