Beslan massacre in perspective

. PHOTO: AFP

The Daily Star ran reports and printed vivid pictures of sobbing, stunned and shocked Russian mothers in the aftermath; these touched a sympathetic chord in numerous readers. So did the major western media in a chorus of consternation and condemnation.

Yet, a question comes to mind. Why did the media fail to run truthful account of thousands of Chechen families brutally driven from their homes, of men hunted down and killed and of thousands of children made orphans in repeated Russian campaigns in Chechnya? Why not a single picture to show the Chechen "black widows" whose husbands were executed and which drove them to become suicide bombers willing to make supreme sacrifice to avenge?

Indeed, many of the past atrocities perpetrated upon fiercely freedom loving Chechens are less documented and even less publicised; few reminded of the Czarist wars of extermination of Eastern Caucasians ( Chechens, Ingushis, and Dagestanis) in the nineteenth century; few reminded of Stalinist era mass deportation (600 thousand) of entire Chechen population in 1944 in cattle trucks when many died of fatigue, starvation and indignity. Little is known about the broken promises of President Boris Yeltsin or the repression of Chechens by Russian warlords thereafter. Chechnya today is deeply scarred and in utter ruins largely due to the long festering wound inflicted by successive Russian regimes.

Will anybody say that once upon a time Russia was one of the two greatest powers of the World? It was then Soviet Union. Now it has a brittle economic system. It cannot also provide security for its citizens.

Royal, ANP-SUST