Sometime in the far future the name of Beslan will be forgotten; but not today; not while parents still mourn for their children murdered three years ago today. A tragedy is a tragedy, but for some it’s an opportunity for propaganda and politics.
Just as we have our “truthers”, in Russia there are those would rather blame the authorities than the evildoers. From AFP:
Tears fell and angry questions rang out on Saturday as Russia marked the third anniversary of the Beslan school hostage crisis that left 332 people dead, more than half of them children. The central memorial event opened with the tolling of bells at the ruins of the school in this small town in the republic of North Ossetia, where hostage-takers demanding Russian withdrawal from Chechnya seized over 1,000 hostages on September 1, 2004.Funereal music played while over 3,000 mourners gathered under heavy guard outside the school, holding candles and laying flowers in the burnt-out husk of the gymnasium where the hostages were held.Portraits of victims lined the scarred walls of the gymnasium, as did angry signs reflecting the emotional and political turmoil the crisis’s bloody aftermath still provokes here.“There is no forgiveness for the authorities for allowing Beslan,” one said. “The federal security service and interior ministry are responsible for terror,” read another.
So it goes, and such is the insidious nature of terror and the ideologies that use it. Chechen “separatists” caused the massacre — but do not be fooled, and do not let cowardice shield real truth.
The “Chechen Separatists” are really Islamist terrorists, working in yet another country to establish the rule of extreme sharia or the Caliphate. The groups responsible are allied with Al Qaeda, a notion that was downplayed at the time of the event. It never fails that some people would rather imagine conspiracies than face the evil under their nose – if they faced terror then they might feel compelled to do something about it. They might be shaken out of their comfortable existence, just as the parents of Beslan were that grim morn three years agone.
Update: Putin Remembers
