Tenants of "manor house" in Grozny seek Russian President's support

In Chechnya, tenants of House 2/1 in Putin Avenue in Leninskiy District of Grozny, asked by city authorities to abandon their apartments, wrote an open letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev asking him for help.

The scandal around House 2/1 in Putin Avenue in Grozny burst out last week, when the tenants of this elite house were visited by officials from the city administration who ordered to abandon their apartments by November 15, since the house, as they said, in the state of failure.

"We have serious grounds for alert," the tenants assert. "There was a publication in the Internet that allegedly Russian experts from the Ministry for Emergencies (MfE) had stated that our house was unfit for residence. We are sure that all this mess around our house was customized; and we don't trust a word of these "specialists". On that very day, when MfE workers made this inspection (on October 16), we spoke with them, and they told us that the house would stand for at least 100 years; and now they declare the opposite."

The residents express their bewilderment why no other structures in the area, except for their house, were inspected, although, as they assert, in several five-storey houses located here such huge cracks appeared in walls and ceilings after the earthquake on October 11 that people are scared to stay in their flats.

"As before, we are convinced that they want to oust us out of here under far-fetched pretexts, since certain high-ranking bosses just want to have apartments here, in the 'manor house'," they assert.

The tenants say that they have already addressed on the matter President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, Prosecutor's Office and Russian Ombudsman. They now hope that Dmitri Medvedev, as a lawyer and warrant of the Constitution, will help them. According to the people, should the administration of Grozny fail to stop "attacks" on them, they will resort to other steps to defend their constitutional rights and apply to the International Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg.