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Beslan School a New Source of Grief
[02:54 pm] 19 May, 2007

Local residents argue over how to commemorate those who perished in
the tragic siege nearly three years ago. One memorial already stands
outside the ruins of School No. 1, where 331 people – half of them
children – died after the building was seized by Islamic militants
seeking Chechen independence in September 2004.

Water drips over two marble slabs to symbolise the refusal of the
hostage-takers to give water to their more than 1,000
hostages. Personal messages dot the inside of the sports hall where
they were held. Fresh flowers are laid daily. Photographs of the
victims cover the walls. Letters from all round the world have also
been stuck up.

Otherwise, the school is little changed. A temporary structure covers
the blackened timbers of the sports hall’s roof, which was blown off
by the explosions that ended the siege. Scattered schoolbooks and
belongings still carpet the classrooms.

Feofan, the Russian Orthodox bishop of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz, who
heads the Christian majority of the North Ossetia region, proposed
that a church be built over the site. There is an old Christian
tradition of building shrines over the blood of martyrs, he said.

A meeting of local residents backed the idea two years ago and a
committee of monks and survivors was set up to oversee the collection
of funds, but that just proved to be the start of an argument that
seems certain to run and run.

`The church should be built on the territory of the school, but not on
the site of the sports hall,’ said Susanna Dudiyeva, head of the
Beslan Mothers committee, in an interview with IWPR.

Dudiyeva, who lost her son in the tragedy, has long led the bereaved
relatives’ efforts to find out how the disaster happened. She, like
many residents, blames the government for failing to prevent the
carnage that ended the siege and wants a fully independent
investigation.

`We will preserve the school to reproach and shame the authorities,’
she said. `Those, who will come to power in future, should know what
cowardice, arbitrariness and irresponsibility from the government may
lead to.’

She said the sports hall should be preserved so investigators could
continue efforts to discover what caused the first fateful explosion
that blew out the wall of the sports hall, killed many of the hostages
and started the battle that ended the siege.

Other siege survivors said the remains of the school had already
attained a semi-religious meaning of their own without the need to
build a church or monument.

`This is our history – the history of the people of Ossetia,’ said
Zalina Guburova. `This is our `wailing wall’. The heroes of Ossetia
should not be forgotten.’

And some residents object to the church plan on religious
grounds. Beslan has a large Muslim community and Muslim children and
adults were among the victims. The town itself is close to North
Ossetia’s border with Ingushetia, a neighbouring Muslim region where
the group of hostage-takers prepared for the raid.

`It’s wrong to give preference to building an Orthodox church in the
place of the sports hall, because there was no precedence of religion
in the Beslan tragedy,’ said Emma Tagayeva, who heads the Voice of
Beslan organisation for bereaved relatives and who is Muslim.

`The terrorists were not religious people, they were monsters, and
supporting the idea of building an Orthodox church on the site of the
sports hall means making Muslims and representatives of other
religions who were affected by the tragedy feel guilty.’

Local anti-Muslim sentiment can be strong because of the Muslim faith
of the kidnappers and previous ethnic tension between Ingush and
Ossetians. When Ravil Gainutdin, head of the Council of Muftis of
Russia and one of the most prominent of Russia’s 20 million Muslims,
visited the school in March, he wondered aloud why the school was
marked with a cross but not with a crescent.

Dudiyeva criticised him for the comments, saying Russia’s Muslims were
not doing enough to rein in the religious extremists who have so often
attacked civilians during the long Chechen war.

`These children were killed in the name of Allah, and the killers came
from the neighbouring Muslim republics – Ingushetia and
Chechnya. However, we have never heard spiritual leaders of these
republics condemn them. I respect all religions, but Islam won’t be
able to win back respect and acknowledgment until the council of
Muftis declares an all-out war on Wahhabism (hard-line Islam),’ she
told him at the time.

For Zaur Aziyev, another local resident who is also a Muslim, a
non-denominational monument to the victims would be the best solution
to the problem. But there are almost as many suggestions for that as
there are residents. Some want just one of the walls preserved.
Others want a dome put over the whole school. Some hostages want the
whole site cleared once and for all.

`This is a very difficult issue,’ said Elbrus Pliyev, advisor to the
head of Beslan’s administration in an interview with IWPR. `It’s not
up to the administration to make a decision here. It is for the
Mothers of Beslan and the Voice of Beslan to decide. But as a
resident of Beslan – not as a representative of the authorities, but
as an ordinary man, I want a church to be built instead of the
school.’

Gainutdin suggested a mosque could be constructed alongside the
church, providing all local residents with a place to pray since
Beslan’s one mosque is boarded up. But even that would not satisfy
everyone.

`It would be right to preserve the sports hall and have symbols of all
religions put up around it,’ said Aneta Gadieva, a member of the
Mothers of Beslan group.

`Then this sacred place will unite all people, irrespective of what
their religion is.’

By Elizaveta Valieva in Beslan and Vladikavkaz (CRS No. 391 10-May-07)
Elizaveta Valieva is editor of the Ossetia.ru website. The article is
republished from Caucasus Reporting Service of Institute fro War and
Peace Reporting