Pogroms of Chechens in Kabardino-Balkaria

[Aidoneus]

26.9.2003 14:01 MSK
Pogroms of Chechens in Kabardino-Balkaria
Pogrom in the city of Nalchik has continued since mid-September. In the city where there is a policeman on every corner, and whose pride of the law enforcement agencies knows no limits, militant youths have been attacking Chechen students for a week.

The events that began in Nalchik 15 September and have continued for a week, to-date are far from over, and there are details of new incidents emerging all the time. It appears that for pogrom organisers the first two days were something of a warm-up: two cases of beatings of three Chechen university students and teenagers at the sports pitch of school No 23 in Nalchik went unnoticed.

17 September an angry mob of up to 300 people burst into the student accommodation block of Economics and Law College No 1, where on the third floor about 20 students locked themselves behind thin doors. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,’ said Aimani Salamova, who arrived to the college as soon as she heard about the carnage. ‘The attackers completely blocked the building. I could hear screams, the sounds of something breaking, something was falling down with a crash. I tried to pacify the attackers but nobody heard me. In this situation nobody listened or heard anything. Everything was driven by some animal instinct’.

This is how this terrifying scene was described by the eye-witnesses. The attackers appeared to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol. According to some eye-witnesses, among the attackers there were many students from PE faculty of the local university. They were carrying wooden bats and knives. Ilyas Salamov, a medical student, came to the college just before the violence began to pick up his younger brothers, and like the college students was brutally beaten along with his fellow student Alibek Dikiev from the same year. Both talk about what happened very quietly: both have obvious traces of beating on their faces, Ilyas’s lip is bleeding and he has a bad bruise under his left eye, from time to time he clutches his side trying not to make it obvious. His friend Alibek Dikiev has suffered a concussion, he has bruises on his face, his nose is broken, his lip is bleeding and there are bruises all over his body. They were both continuously kicked and passed out at about the same time; they don’t recall the end of the drama.

--snip--

http://www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/articles/2003/9/26/26074.html

[bemildred]

1. Pooty-poot wants them all to go home, I guess.

Booting them all out of Ingushetia too.
Or I suppose this could just be locals annoyed about the conflict,
or indulging in a bit of xenophobia. The theory about driving a
wedge between the two peoples works too, and would make a good deal
of sense if this place is seen as a support area for the Chechen
rebels. But it seems the have official sanction in any case.
:puke:

[Aidoneus]

2. didn't mention who the attackers were exactly..

wasn't able to find that in Russian-language press either, nor was I able to find one that referred to it as an "anti-terror operation" (my disappointment there was reassuring in a way), though I may write that off as becoming annoyed at Babelfish's translations (as usual the originals made more sense, and I haven't yet become comfortable enough with the cyrillic script) and quitting after a short time.

I was assuming it was members of the fascist movements or satellites, state-tolerated either way; the police and skinheads have for years been harassing Chechens for sport (or those who may or may not look of Caucasus origin) with impunity across the federation. I think the particular State/media-social fixation (leaving aside the history of political differences) began shortly after that miracle economy capitalism was supposed to bring never arrived.

I've seen a few "White Power!"-type assholes from time to time, but the idea of roving bands of hundreds of them organized and looking for a good time is a bit frightening.

[bemildred]

3. It's always good to have some distractions when the

government is not doing such a good job of running things.
Better they should brutalize each other than get together and
start walking towards Moscow. Eh?