Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 23 – Today,
Chechens and their supporters in Daghestan, Ingushetia, the Netherlands,
Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Georgia, Turkey and the United
States organized memorial services to honor the memory of the Chechens Stalin
deported from their homeland 74 years ago on this date (kavkazr.com/a/29058225.html).
In fact, it would appear, they did
so everywhere there are Chechens except for one place: Chechnya itself where
Ramzan Kadyrov denounced Stalin but blocked public commemorations lest they
interfere with a Russian military holiday and said Chechens should look forward
not backward (kavpolit.com/articles/kadyrov_chechenskij_narod_nikogda_ne_zabudet_stali-37540/).
But as the Kavkaz Uzel news agency
reported, “the residents of Chechnya are remembering the victims of the
deportation despite the prohibition by the authorities,” something that has
been the case since 2011 and yet another way in which the Internet is changing
the meaning of any such official bans (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/316945/).
Not being allowed
to organize any public activities on the deportations, the news agency says,
Chechens “nonetheless are discussing this date on social networks and
messengers.” Yesterday, on the WhatsApp
messenger network, an appeal appeared calling on people to leave the doors of
their homes open on February 23, a traditional sign of mourning among Chechens.
Others posted pictures, reminiscences,
and photographs about the 1944 events, a not so implicit protest against the
fact that the Kadyrov regime not only banned meetings but did not provide much
coverage on its television station. On the
10:00 pm news, for instance, it devoted most of its coverage to the Russian Day
of the Defenders of the Fatherland.
When the station finally mentioned
the deportation, it was only in the context of the notion that “although the
Chechens were exiled, the best sons of the people continued to fight on the
fronts of the Great Fatherland War,” one anonymous source of the Kavkaz Uzel
news service said.
Many Chechens indicated they had seen the appeal to keep
their doors open on February 23, but some said few would do so because the
regime would certainly view that as an act of civil disobedience and what it
what do to those who engaged in such actions could only be imagined given what
it did to Ruslan Kutayev who was jailed for talking about the deportation and
complaining about Kadyrov’s shift of the memorial day in 2014 to May 10.
Those
who will avoid taking that risk, however, Chechens said, are likely to
distribute food to their poorer family members and friends, another traditional
Chechen action of remembrance. But as
for Kutayev, he apparently will avoid doing even that lest he be sent back to
prison from which he was released only in December.
But
perhaps the most important way that Chechens are using social media to remember
that which officials would prefer they forget is to share their memories. One Chechen shared the following memory of
the dark day when Chechen women, children and old men were loaded on train cars
for dispatch to Central Asia.
He
said he had heard from witnesses the following story: “When a large group of
Chechens were brought to the railroad station and were begun to be loaded into
box cars, the women and children began to shout and cry. And then one of the old
men shouted to them: ‘People,’ he said, ‘Be calm!’ They cannot take us anywhere
where the All High won’t be.”
After
that, he said, “the noise and cries ceased.”
No comments:
Post a Comment