Travesty Against Beslan Mothers

I know some of my opinions about Russian policies and the over-bearing nature of Russian government organizations are met with angst from people I respect - People who also know Russia. However, it is difficult to argue the perception of instability in Russia, when the current government takes archetypal soviet actions.

Beslan - 396 people killed, many of them school children held hostage in a 3 day siege.  I remember it well. I helped raise funds for the victims.

The investigation was a sham - cloaked in secrecy. The survivors and families of the victims have never received satisfaction as to what occurred there.  But, here is how they are treated.
From Siberian Light 

True, under Russian law, such criticism of the President is technically illegal - the law was amended in 2006 to bring public slander of a government official within the legal definition of extremism,

But has anyone considered whether this prosecution is actually in the public interest? How will the Russian public be served by prosecuting a protest group led by greiving mothers?

Surely (and assuming that Putin isn’t complicit), the most sensible way forward for the Russian authorities is to accept that grief causes mothers who have lost their children to lash out, and accept this as a natural expression of their anguish?

Instead, by prosecuting these mothers as extremists all Russia does is trivialize its, and the world’s, ongoing struggle against real terrorists.

The Voice of Beslan published a letter in 2005, for which they will now be prosecuted.

addressed to “Everyone sympathetic to Beslan’s tragedy” and posted on the group’s web site, says “none of the acts of terrorism that occurred during Putin’s presidency has been investigated properly” and that Putin has become “the guarantor for the terrorists” by not punishing senior officials for the botched Beslan rescue operation. More than 330 people died, most as special forces tried to rescue them during the final chaotic hours of the 2004 hostage taking at the Beslan school.

“We are surprised to find out that our right to demand a fair investigation of the Beslan tragedy has been declared extremist,” Voice of Beslan founder Ella Kesayeva said by telephone from Vladikavkaz.

Kesayeva, whose daughter survived the attack, said she had been summoned to appear in a Nazran court on Monday. She said she had asked prosecutors to move the case to Vladikavkaz, where the Voice of Beslan was registered before it was disbanded by North Ossetia’s Supreme Court last month in a separate lawsuit.

Vladislav Svetostov, a spokesman for a Nazran prosecutor, declined to comment about the extremist case ahead of the hearings. He defended the complaint, though, saying prosecutors in all regions are supposed to monitor the media to make sure that nothing illegal is published.

The Voice of Beslan was formed as a nongovernmental organization to raise awareness about the attack two years ago. Kesayeva led the group until the North Ossetian court upheld a lawsuit by another NGO with the same name last month.

Kesayeva accused the authorities of using the latest lawsuit to try to silence critical Beslan residents.

Many of these family members of vicitms and victims themselves also stood in 2004, blocking highways in North Ossetia - Alania to try to get attention for the need for investigations into what sparked the battle at Number One School. The Russian authorities in the region responded unfavorably then too.

I too don’t indict Putin on this issue directly, however he cannot possibly be deaf to this . It makes no sense that the event which was galvanizing with respect to Russia’s stance on terrorism has no attention from him. He appointed the commission which pushed this under the carpet. This is a federal issue.

As for the treatment of the Mothers of Beslan, well I condemn that.  Their children paid the ultimate price for Russia’s war in Chechnya - Russia’s war on terror. They deserve better.