"Twenty-two percent of 90,000 complaints with the European Court came from Russian citizens," Vera Milinchuk, Russia's envoy to the court, told a news conference adding that the court considered only 5% of total petitions.
Milinchuk said that between 1999 and 2006, the court heard 207 claims against the Russian government, 310 against Turkey and 206 against Britain. "I would not say that suits from Russian citizens made up a substantial share," she said.
The official said 197 of 207 Russian claims had been granted and recognized as human rights violations by the Russian government. She also said Russians mostly complained about the failure to implement court decisions, violations of trial terms and breaches of property rights.
When asked about lawsuits filed by Chechen residents, Milinkevich said they did not constitute "a lion's share." "Statistics indicate the court had agreed to consider 98 complaints from residents of Chechnya by the end of 2006," she said.
On April 13, the European Court of Human Rights accepted a claim against the Russian government from 58 victims of a hostage crisis in a Moscow theater, Dubkovka, filed four years ago.
The Strasbourg Court has been delaying consideration of other claims from Russia, including two high-profile suits. The now bankrupt oil company Yukos filed a suit against the Russian Federation in 2004. The second claim was filed in the same year by Russian World War II partisan Vasily Kononov against Latvian authorities who have accused him of genocide for ordering the killing of several Nazi collaborators in the republic in 1944.
