 The critics alleged that rather than put a stop to the human rights violations, the military appeared to be doing its best to hide them.Families were reported to be paying ransom to Russian troops for bodies.On March 31, 2003, the Russian government's human rights commissioner Oleg Mironov called on the authorities to open the mass burial sites in Chechnya to identify the bodies and establish the reasons for their deaths, "and then bury them as humans deserve."