Do you really, really, miss me, CB? Aww.....That's nice. :-)
Anyway, I have been busy as all get out, with the Chechnya-Dagestan thing. Hope to get to Moscow soon. In the meantime, the Russian net & e-mail service has expanded to such a degree that I get more information than I can even handle...And I've been spending a fortune on phones...
I'm trying to get the word out as much as I can, and through whatever sources I can find. Here, as proof that I am really busy & not shunning you guys, is an op-ed piece I had published today (Thursday) in The Washington Times. (Can you believe it, a flaming liberal like me in the WT?)
MOSCOW'S SCAPEGOATS
The War on the Chechen Diaspora
Joan Beecher Eichrodt
On Saturday, several news agencies reported that a team of FBI agents will be assisting their Russian colleagues in the investigation of the recent apartment house bombings in Moscow,Volgodonsk, and Buinaksk that have left more than 300 people dead. This collaborative venture in anti-terrorism has the strong support of President Bill Clinton, who issued a statement, pledging that “America stands ready to work with Russia to protect our citizens from this common threat.”
Meanwhile, on the same day in Moscow, prominent members of the Chechen diaspora in Moscow were meeting to protest the fact the Russian anti-terrorism drive was targeting ethnic Chechens, and to organize a Coordinating Center that could bring their concerns to the highest levels of the city and federal governments.
Contacted by telephone Sunday, the Chairman of the Coordinating Committee, Professor Dzhabrail Gakayev, noted that ordinary Chechens, who suffered so much death and destruction during the 1994-1996 war, have suffered more than anyone else at the hands of their own home-grown “bandits” in the years following it.
He estimates that since 1995, about 500,000 ethnic Chechens have fled the republic and its intolerable conditions. That is more than half of Chechnya's total population. About 100,000 of them have settled in Moscow, whose Chechen community, in pre-war days, numbered no more than 3,000. Professor Gakayev stresses that the majority of them aren't criminals, but refugees, who have no place else to go.
Yet these are the very people who are being swept up in Moscow's anti-terrorist “Whirlwind” operation. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has always refused to honor the provision of the Russian Constitution guaranteeing freedom of movement, so the city still retains its Soviet-era “propiska” system. Thus, the population is divided into the fortunate who have “permanent registration”; the less fortunate who have “temporary registration”; and the truly unfortunate who are considered “illegals.”
The “whirlwind” began when all “temporary guests” of the city were ordered to re-register within three days (that unrealistic deadline has since been extended), while passport checks and police raids were staged all over the city to find the “illegals.” By mid-week, some 15,000 people had been denied registration, and ordered out of the city. And although there is nothing new about police harassment of immigrants from the Caucasus -- euphemistically referred to as “persons of Caucasian nationality,” popularly referred to as “blacks” -- the focus this time has been on Chechens in particular.
Chechens have been beaten, locked up, and booked on trumped-up charges. Some 550 of them are now being held in an improvised detention center, outside of Moscow. Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a retired Internal Forces General, who heads a nationwide police association, confirmed in a telephone interview Saturday night that the Moscow police have routinely planted drugs and ammunition on Chechen “suspects.” General Aslakhanov, himself a Chechen, said that top police officials who attended the Moscow diaspora's meeting Saturday admitted that abuses have been taking place.
Ordinary citizens all over Russia have been clamoring for even more drastic anti-Chechen measures ever since a multi-national guerrilla force, based in Chechnya, invaded neighboring Dagestan back in August. Now that the government has firmly linked the apartment building bombings to the guerrillas and their alleged backers (e.g., Osama bin Laden), the wave of Chechenophobia has risen so high that many observers fear it will culminate in a wave of pogroms.
Although Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been careful to say that the bombings are the handiwork of “international terrorists,” most politicians and media sources put the blame exclusively on “Chechen terrorists.” Meanwhile, a vocal segment of the general public sees all Chechens as potential terrorists.
In an internet chatroom, “Sergei” has some advice for his fellow posters: “Kill a Chechen whenever you see one.”
“Clear our cities of this Chechen scum,” writes an outraged “Slava.” “Pack them all off to Siberia!”
“Vladimir's” suspicion extends to all “blacks.” “But it is not necessary to wipe them all out,” he says. “Just make it intolerable for blacks to live in Moscow. Mark their mailboxes with chalk, refuse to go to school with them, don't sell them anything...There is no such thing as a ‘good' black....Do you really think that their diasporas and their muftis don't all support the terrorists?!”
Most politicians do not go that far, but even the most “liberal” among them often seem eager to take a hard line. It is hard to say whether they are deliberately whipping up this xenophobic hysteria, or simply catering to it (it is an election year in Russia, after all). And only a few have been asking tough questions.
Under the circumstances, the United States government might be well advised to restrain its enthusiasm for an anti-terrorism operation that may yet prove to be little more than a hunt for scapegoats.
(Joan Beecher Eichrodt, a historian and journalist, has spent much time in Chechnya and Russia.)
|
