Election may not be a solution in Chechnya

MOSCOW: Chechnya held its first parliamentary elections over the weekend since Russian troops took control of the province six years back, but the election may fall well short of a solution. Militant Islamist groups demanding independence for this former Soviet republic have been engaged in continuing conflict with Russian forces.

“The political situation which is characterised by frequent cases of abduction, arbitrary detentions, kidnappings and killing, combined with the Kremlin authorities’ heavy-handed policies, would hardly make elections free and fair,” Human Rights Watch deputy director Alexander Petrov told IPS.

“Frankly speaking, for Russia, it’s better to have a non-functional and pro-Kremlin constitutional system of government in place — with a new parliament dominated by loyalists who will continue to take instructions from Moscow. The election has relatively little in common with a real political process,” he said. United Russia, the Kremlin-backed political party that dominates the state Duma (parliament) emerged as the party with the clear majority. The official turnout was 65 per cent of about 600,000 registered voters. The new parliament will be convened by Dec 14.

“The prevailing atmosphere of fear gave rise to serious concerns that the basic rights to freedom of expression and of association have not fully been realised in Chechnya,” Amnesty International associate researcher for Russia and ex-Soviet republics Victoria Webb told IPS. Chechens are still frightened because “the real power... is not the elected authorities,” said Andreas Gross, head of the Chechnya delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights body. The real authorities, he said, are the law-enforcement bodies.

“This creates a situation that makes it hard for people to exercise freely their right to vote,” he said in a statement. “When you’re full of much fear, it’s difficult to be a good citizen and elect a parliament.” Members of the PACE delegation had found that most people were scared of going to the polling booths, he said. Opposition leaders too have been doubtful about the election.

“Nothing is going to change if human rights abuses are allowed to continue and federal forces frequently harass civilians,” spokesman for the Duma committee on federal and regional politics, and Communist Party member Sergey Reshulsky told IPS. —Dawn/IPS News Service

Brain spot for body size perception identified

NEW YORK: British researchers have identified the place in the brain where we process perceptions about the size and shape of our body parts. The spot, within the brain’s left parietal lobe, is about the size of a quarter and located at the top back of the head, Dr. Henrik Ehrsson of the University College London Institute of Neurology told Reuters Health.

The findings, Ehrsson said, could one day be used to better understand conditions that involve misperception of body image — or example anorexia, in which people see themselves as too fat even when they’re skeletal.

As they report in the journal PloS Biology, Ehrsson and his team identified the brain area by employing a technique that produces an effect known as the “Pinocchio illusion.” It involves vibrating the skin over the tendons in a joint, which produces the illusion that the joint is bending or extending depending on where the stimulus is placed.

For example, a person who placed his finger at the end of his nose could be made to feel that his finger was extending, giving him the perception that his nose growing.

In the current experiment, volunteers placed their hands at their waists. The skin over the tendon responsible for bending the wrists inward was then vibrated, producing the illusion that the waist was shrinking.

Brain scans during the test found that activity within the parietal region mirrored participants’ illusion of a whittled waist. The stronger the illusion, the more intense the brain activity.

The body has receptors for figuring out elementary sensations like movement, heat and pressure, Ehrsson noted. For something more complex like the perception of body size, he added, “this is something the brain has to sort of figure out by computing different signals.”

Ehrsson and his team are now planning experiments in which they will directly stimulate the brain area to determine the effect on body size perception.—Reuters