Ethnic Russians in Kamchatka Accuse Governor of Genocide, Threaten to Take Up Arms

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 13 – The Russian Community of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East says that the governor there is carrying out a campaign of genocide against their nation and that they are prepared to “take up arms” against him to defend themselves and their children from destruction unless he explains himself and changes course.

            “We are ready with arms in our hands to defend our right to life,” the organization says. “Let the authorities try to justify what they are doing [but] if they can’t, then we have the right to do so, to defend ourselves, our elderly and children, all the poor and homeless by any available means” (today41.ru/russkaya-obshhina-obvinila-ilyuhina-v-genotside-zhiteley-kamchatki/).

            “They are killing us! This is a fact!” the appeal says, and using force to resist it is “not extremism [but rather] the only possible means of defending our right to life.”

            Kamchatka’s Russian Community says that what is happening to Russians in their region is not accident but rather the result of an intentional policy which has as “its goal the destruction of the people and the continuing uncontrolled theft of natural resources” from their region and thus from themselves.

            And that policy, the Community’s leadership says, reflects Moscow’s decisions and desires as well, suggesting that the Russian Community in one of the most distant parts of the Russian Federation is angry not just at the local governor but at the entire Russian regime from Putin and Medvedev on down. 

            The Community’s president says that “the policy of genocide is useful to the powers that be” because “any sociologist will tell you that an individual forced to struggle for survival will be politically passive.” But using genocide to achieve that end violates international law, the Russian constitution, and the principles of the social contract between ruler and ruled.

            That theory, V.Yu. Shumanin says, “presupposes … the right of the people to revolt.” And that means in Kamchatka that any “’hungry revolt’” will not be an extremist action but rather “the realization of their constitutional right to the last means of defense of their rights (above all, their right to life.)”

            Russian rulers both regional and federal have not only driven down the incomes of Russians and Russian pensioners by their policies but have set minimum standards at levels where the people are condemned to starvation and even death. They are thus at the end of their rope, and they can be expected to react, the head of the Russian Community says.

            “We will find the ways and means for a struggle against [this act of] genocide,” Shumanin continues. “Let the authorities dislike our ways and means, but we will stop the genocide in Kamchatka.” There will be victims: the only question is how many and on which side.

            According to him, “the powers that be have declared war on the people, and war without losses doesn’t occur. We are prepared to go to the end on behalf of the common good, on behalf of out elderly and our children.  This,” the head of the Russian Community says, “is in the tradition of the Russian people.”