The Martin Ennals Award jury said from Geneva on Tuesday that it had singled out the group for its tireless commitment to the risky task of seeking accountability and protecting human rights campaigners in the troubled Russian region.
"The Joint Mobile Group takes on the hardest cases when the justice system has failed," said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, part of the prize jury.
"It faces tremendous adversity and danger in bringing human rights abuses into the spotlight in today's Chechnya."
Russian campaigner Igor Kalyapin set up the Joint Mobile Group in 2009 after the murder of several human rights activists working in Chechnya.
"When the international community is watching us it is more difficult for the authorities to take steps against us," he said in a statement.
The group aims to bring to justice people who commit enforced disappearances, torture in custody and extrajudicial executions in Chechnya.
The republic is facing an Islamist insurgency in the aftermath of two disastrous wars between Russian authorities and Chechen separatists.
Human rights campaigners have criticized the authorities for deploying collective punishment, arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment, hitting the wider population and not simply insurgents.
The Joint Mobile Group sends investigators into Chechnya to document human rights abuses, using the information they gather to spotlight violations and seek legal redress.
The Martin Ennals Award is named after the former secretary general of Amnesty International, and was created in 1993, two years after his death.
Its jury is composed of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists and seven other international campaign organizations.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Russian rights watchdog cited for Chechnya work
Russia-based watchdog the Joint Mobile Group has won an international human rights award for its efforts to tackle abuses in Chechnya.
RACISM
End anti-Roma racism: German Amnesty boss
Amnesty International released on Tuesday a damning report on Europe's attitude towards its Roma community. The head of the charity's German branch, Selmin Caliskan, said she believed that governments allowed racism to happen.
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Instead of working to abolish racism, statements from even high ranking politicians seem to “fuel the belief that Roma people are responsible for their own exclusion,” the Amnesty director said.
“The EU and its member states have to finally put an end to racially-motivated attacks against members of the Roma community,” Caliskan said in a statement on Tuesday.
The stern words followed an Amnesty International report in which it was revealed that many of Europe’s 10-12 million Roma are at increased risk of racist violence and discrimination. The organisation believes not enough is being done by governments to protect them.
The problem was not a new one, she said. Instead, the “current situation can be traced back to years of disrespecting the rights of this large European minority.” Today, many countries blame Roma for a rise in petty crime.
“Excluded from access to essential services and unable to get redress for human rights violations, many Roma feel abandoned,” Amnesty said in a statement.
Caliskan added, “It's totally unacceptable that Roma people are living in constant fear of violent attacks in many places across Europe.” And that this was perpetuated “by the passive behaviour of governments, which quietly accept systematic discrimination against Roma people”
The Amnesty report – titled “Europe: “We ask for justice”: Europe’s failure to protect Roma from racist violence” – uses incidents from the Czech Republic, France and Greece, where excessive violence has been reported against members of the Roma community. The rest of Europe was not exempt, though.
Amnesty has, following the report's release, called on the EU commission to stress to states' police to investigate incidents involving Roma people more seriously. All too frequently will police not look into suspected racial motivation, it said.
The Roma, a traditionally nomadic people whose ancestors left India centuries ago, have long suffered from discrimination. They were killed in their hundreds of thousands by the Nazis during World War II, alongside Jews and homosexuals.
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