Beslan tragedy provokes wave of xenophobia in Russia, says CK editor-in-chief

Recently Caucasian Knot editors have started to receive critical comments concerning the coverage of the situation in Russia after the tragedy in Beslan. This is true that developments of recent days make us publish materials on how security agencies are trying to force people not involved in the terror attack to confess to the complicity in it. Unfortunately it is taking place in many regions in the Caucasus and in Moscow

We realize that such materials are dangerous for some Caucasian regions but find their publication necessary nevertheless because too few sources of information independent of the power are left in Russia and because the experience of recent years deprives us of the hope that judicial bodies will work impartially. Now as before, the Caucasian Knot editors are open for any materials presenting an alternative point of view within the limits of the Russian legislation.

It seems to me that the whole civilized Russia and the whole world feel a shock now. Forty days have passed since the day of the tragic death of hostages in Beslan, but the federal authorities have not made necessary effort to change the situation so far. The final number of victims and all names of the dead have still not been given to us. Compensation is promised to the victims and their relatives, a school is promised to the town, but only several policemen, who allegedly showed negligence, have been mentioned among the guilty. The parliamentary investigation is conducted in the atmosphere of secrecy and without taking into consideration the experience of the commission that investigated actions of the US authorities on September 11, 2001, even those of the president. Such actions by the Russian authorities entail only new negligence and new irresponsibility. The model of changing the country's government system proposed to us will only aggravate the situation, which is complex even without it.

Relatives and loved ones of the victims and people in Beslan, throughout North Osetia, throughout the Caucasus, and Russia experienced and will long bear a burden of a shock and irreplaceable loss. The inhuman terror attack in Beslan has nothing to compare with in modern history. There is only a grief - a grief of the mother whose last, seventh son was killed by a rebel in Grozny, a grief of the mother whose son was shot dead by an OMON (special police force) officer right in a hospital a week after rebels' raid into Grozny, a grief of people whose relatives were killed in the Dubrovka theatre siege because of the criminal unpreparedness for the storm, and a grief of people whose loved ones died in Beslan because of the same criminal unpreparedness of the higher officials.

The crimes of terrorists in Beslan and crimes of Russian soldiers are incommensurable. But one must not forget they stand in one line.

This state cannot be compared with the one that seizes Muscovites after a new terror attack or hostage-taking. The Beslan tragedy is incommensurable with the grief of civilians in Chechnya whose relatives are killed by Russian soldiers. Rebels' executing civilians in Nazran in June and in Grozny in August is incommensurable with the horror of Beslan.

They try to explain to us that it is all the fault of international terrorism and that these horrific crimes are committed by mercenaries. And another thing they try to instill in us is that a crime has a nationality.

Pogroms directed against Caucasians by origin have started in different Russian towns. Moslem women wearing traditional clothes suffer persecution and insults on the part of Moscow residents. Moslems were unable to take flights of several Russian airlines because of other passengers' intolerance and hysteria.

The wave of racial hatred must be immediately stopped. Otherwise it will bury us all. People of Russia, do not let xenophobia seize you!

People of North Osetia, do not follow those who provoked a conflict between peoples in the past and is provoking it now. Criminals have no nationality, and so do terrorists.

No matter how criminal functionaries with shoulder straps in Moscow, Vladikavkaz, Grozny, and Nazran would try to persuade us that the whole ethnos is responsible for the actions of terrorists of the same nationality, we remember? We remember that such was indeed the logic from which organizers of deportations and repressions against whole nations proceeded. People of Russia must not allow the authorities to play criminal nationalist card once again.