Mothers Of Russia

‘WHAT would George Bush be doing now if American children had been the victims of a massacre of the type enacted at Beslan?

‘Can I stay and finish the book?’

Of course, we don’t have to imagine, it being only a few years since people hell-bent on murder and mayhem destroyed the World Trade Centre and so many lives.

In the immediate aftermath of that horror, Bush either sagely gathered his thoughts or stupidly continued reading a children’s story – depending on which political side you approach the event from – before going on the offensive.

He did not seek out Osama bin Laden for a chat at Camp David?

So Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, appears to make a valid point when he asks the Guardian: ‘Why don’t you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to the White House, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?’

Only, although the Guardian senses Putin’s ‘searing sarcasm’, it still employs its editorial to ask questions of Russia’s hardline policy in Chechnya, mentioning ‘widespread evidence of human rights abuses by Russian troops’ (what Putin terms ‘ugly phenomena’) and urging the Russian leader to ‘seek political dialogue’ with his enemy.

It’s a nice idea, but try telling the distraught people of Beslan who are burying their children that this is the time for talking.

And there are some of the grief-stricken on the cover of the Independent, their pain captured in no less than 23 pictures of heart-wrenching turmoil.

And now listen again to Putin, once more quoted on the Guardian’s front page: ‘Just imagine if people who shoot children in the back came to power anywhere on our planet. Ask yourself that and you will have no more questions about our policy in Chechnya.’

Only there are questions, and many, as the Indy reports, are coming from sections of the Russian media.

Izvestia, a Russian daily whose editor was sacked over his paper’s coverage of the bloodbath at Beslan, looks at the 200 people who appear to have vanished from official statistics and asks: ‘What may have happened to those who are missing?’

It then challenges almost every point of the official version of events, calling into question how the shoot-out was triggered (no bomb, just a vigilante with a gun) and the presence of Arab terrorists (charred corpses mistaken for swarthy faces).

It’s all thought-provoking stuff but, when faced with the reality of hundreds of graves and the heartache of those who have lost, it’s all no more than a brief distraction from the undeniable ugly truth…’

Posted: 7th, September 2004 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink