Political Cartoons And The Sufferings Of The Chechen People

Montreal September 4, 2004 - (MMN Editorial) In today's edition of the Montreal Gazette there is a political cartoon by Terry Mosher (aka Aisln) which shows a masked man holding an infant child and pointing a gun at the child's head. The caption reads "Heroism To Some." (see the cartoon at:  http://mirror.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/aislin/Aislin.0904.jpg)

The message is a clear reference to the latest hostage crisis in the southern Russian town of  Beslan where a group of Chechens held hundreds of school children hostage with the threat to kill them while demanding independence for Chechnya. The horrific scene ended yesterday in tragedy. As of this writing, more than 322 people, including 155 children, are reported dead and at least 700 others have been injured.

Every person of conscience must speak out against using children and all innocents as hostages for political gain as it is a barbaric act and only deflects attention away from an otherwise legitimate struggle for freedom from occupation and oppression.

It would be interesting, however, if the Montreal Gazette cartoonist would be willing to draw a similar cartoon portraying the daily atrocities committed against Chechen civilians at the hands of Russian troops.

It is a well documented fact that rape, torture and extrajudicial executions by Russian troops have become everyday occurrences in Chechnya and neighbouring Ingushetia, according to a statement released Thursday, April 8, 2004 by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and the Moscow-based Memorial. The full statement can be read online at: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/04/07/russia8408.htm  

In their April 8th statement,  the human rights groups called on the government of the Russian Federation to "take immediate steps to bring an end to the human rights abuses in Chechnya and Ingushetia," and further urged the international community to "hold the Russian government to its obligations under international human rights standards."  It stated that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights should "adopt a strong resolution to this effect regarding the situation in Chechnya and Ingushetia" and that a  failure on the part of the commission  to "unequivocally denounce gross and systematic violations of human rights would diminish and reduce the Commission's moral authority."

In an earlier statement on October 8, 2003, the same group of human rights organizations accused the West of ignoring blatant and state-sanctioned abuses in Russia for the sake of improving relations with President Vladimir Putin. At that time the group released a 542-page book, entitled "People Live Here," documenting hundreds of cases of civilians killed or abducted in Chechnya recorded from eyewitness accounts by activists working in Chechnya from July to December 2000. The volume documents the cases of 489 Chechens killed during the six-month stretch, and further lists the cases of hundreds of people abducted in the war and presents interviews with their families and other eyewitnesses.

Chechnya has been ravaged by conflict since 1994, and at least 100,000 Chechen civilians have been killed by Russian troops since that time.

But, sadly enough, there is little mention in the mainstream media of the sufferings of the Chechen people at the hands of their Russian tormentors, and their are no or few political cartoons depicting this reality. 

Over the next several days there will correctly be a worldwide outpouring of sympathy and condemnation of the latest tragedy in Beslan Russia in which many innocents suffered and were ruthlessly murdered. But the sufferings of the Chechen people will continue to be ignored and, in addition, Putin and his Russian troops will use this latest incident as a pretext to perpetrate further human rights vilolations against the Chechen people all under the banner of fighting "the war on terrorism" and will conger up images of "Al Qaeda" and "Islamist terror." This will be done in order to deflect attention away from ongoing Russian human rights abuses.   In addition the White House, as expected, has issued a statement saying the US stands side by side with Russia in "our global fight against terrorism.”