Globe and Mail, Canada
Sept 15 2004
Chechens live in fear of reprisals
Anti-Caucasian discrimination hits new high in wake of Beslan, MARK
MacKINNON reports
By MARK MacKINNON
MOSCOW — The day after the siege ended at Beslan’s Middle School No.
1, terror came to the Khadayev home outside Moscow.
Asya Khadayeva, 43, first spotted the car with the dark windows as
she left for work at about 7:30 a.m. The car followed slowly as she
and her daughter walked to the bus stop, and she was relieved when
the bus picked them up and their pursuers didn’t follow. An ethnic
Chechen, she had been worried about revenge attacks on her family
following the tragedy in Beslan.
What she didn’t know is that the men in the car were waiting for her
to leave. After the bus pulled away, about 30 men burst through her
home’s doors and windows. Some wore masks and security-service
uniforms, others carried grenades and automatic weapons.
Her three teenaged children, who were still in the house, were forced
to lie facedown on the floor with blankets over their heads. A gun
was pressed against her 15-year-old son Magomed’s skull. Her
five-year-old daughter Amina was dragged from under her bed and
forced to kneel beside her siblings at gunpoint while the home was
searched.
“She was screaming, ‘Don’t shoot me and don’t kill my brothers,’ ”
said Ms. Khadayeva, who moved to Moscow with her family four years
ago to escape the war in Chechnya. “They wouldn’t even let her older
brothers comfort her.”
The children’s father, Ramzan Khadayev, said the men identified
themselves as members of various Russian security services, including
the Federal Security Bureau.
They were at the house for several hours, Ms. Khadayeva said. Some of
the officers later drove to the food market where both parents and
Ms. Khadayeva’s brother work, and questioned all three.
“One officer told us, ‘You should leave [Moscow], it’s not your
home,’ ” she said. “I told them, ‘Okay, give me back my apartment,
which your soldiers destroyed, and the property that was stolen from
me and I’ll leave tomorrow,’ ” Ms. Khadayeva said. “They said that
wasn’t their problem. They told us we are Chechens so we are
terrorists.”
Chechens have been persecuted and feared in Russia since the 19th
century, when the armies of Czar Alexander II first tried to subdue
the fierce people who live along the north end of the Caucasus
mountain range. But the discrimination has hit new heights in recent
years as dozens of acts of terrorism across Russia have been blamed
on Chechens.
The hatred grew again after the hostage-taking at Beslan, where more
than 350 people were killed. Yesterday, Russian prosecutors charged a
Chechen man identified as Nurpashi Kulayev in the deadly
hostage-taking, the Interfax news agency reported.
With a fresh wave of anti-Caucasian xenophobia sweeping the country,
many Chechens say they now rarely leave their homes, fearful of even
their neighbours.
In Moscow, police have arrested dozens of Chechens in the past few
days, including a group of 20 men yesterday who were renovating
schools in the region. They were released later in the day. Last
week, in the Ural mountain city of Yekaterinburg, gangs of youths
armed with clubs, chains and Molotov cocktails attacked cafés owned
by Armenians and Azeris, killing one person and hospitalizing two
others.
Human-rights activists say the police are among the worst offenders
when it comes to anti-Caucasian racism.
“They have orders from the authorities to check every Caucasian
person, man or a woman. They treat every Caucasian as a potential
terrorist,” said Yuri Tabak of the Moscow Human Rights Bureau.
The situation for Chechens and other Caucasians living in Moscow has
become so dangerous that some say they’ve stopped going outside
unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Fatima Dudayeva fled the ruins of Grozny to join her sister in Moscow
a month ago, hoping to find work and “have some fun” in the big city
after almost a decade of constant war. But her arrival coincided with
a string of suicide bombings carried out by young Chechen women —
two on passenger planes and another outside a Moscow metro station.
Denied registration papers that would allow her to look for work or
rent a place of her own, she stays with her cousin in a small
apartment in the city and says she’s gone further than the corner
store only once in the past two weeks.
During that single trip out, Ms. Dudayeva was stopped by a policeman
who asked her to prove she wasn’t wearing a suicide belt. She had to
pay him a 500-ruble bribe (about $25) to avoid being taken into
custody.
“They look for a Chechen trace in everything that goes wrong,” the
dark-eyed 26-year-old said. “The next time something happens in
Moscow, the next terror act, it will be better to go back to
Chechnya, despite the war there, and stay for a while until things
calm down here.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress