Re: Beslan

[Chris Doss <lookoverhere1@xxxxxxxxx>]

James Heartfield got it spot-on:

The WEEK
ending 6 September 2004

BESLAN: BLAMING THE TARGET, EXCUSING THE PERPETRATORS

Coverage of the Beslan school massacre told us more
about the mindset of the West than it did about the
violence in the Russian Federation republic of North
Ossettia. By any normal standard, the crime was
committed against the Russian people. A gang, claiming
adherence to independence from the Federation for
Chechnya, took 1400 people hostage during a school
celebration. Holding them for three days - without
water and in baking heat - the gang opened fire on a
group of children who made a break for freedom, the
Russian special forces tried to stop them shooting
with covering fire, upon which the gang set off the
bombs that killed upwards of 350 people.

But at the BBC, this atrocity was covered as an
embarrassment to Russian President Putin. Western
correspondents seemed unable to understand the gravity
of the situation, dumping on the Russian authorities,
instead. The Dutch Foreign Minister Berhard Bott,
speaking for the European Union said: 'We would like
to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy
could have happened'. But it was not the Russian
authorities that killed the children and their
families. Andreas Gross from the Council of Europe
added to the insult saying ' when something like this
happens, it does not happen just out of nothing, just
out of the dark'. The Times, projecting its own
appetite for up-to-the-minute gore, complained that
the Russian media did not report the shooting for a
whole hour, seeing this as evidence of a return to the
Soviet era.

Of course the West has a history of strategic sympathy
for the 'Islamic republics' on the old Soviet Union's
southern frontier, having supported separatist
movements and 'governments-in-exile' - a policy that
led to Western sponsorship of the Afghan Mujahideen
and volunteer Arab militias in Bosnia. Focussing on
the Russian Federation's treatment of Chechnya as if
it were the explanation for the atrocity confuses the
issue. In fact it is the splits in the Chechen
separatists, and the Federation's relative success in
consolidating links with moderate leaders there that
has driven the fringe into more extreme acts.
Isolation, not popular support, explains the
militants' anger. A popular campaign would have felt
more constrained from attacking schoolchildren -
unlike media commentators in the West.




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