"Don't believe, don't fear, don't ask"By Usam Baysayev, Memorial Human Rights Centre, special to Prague Watchdog
We will not forget this laughter or this indifference. We will remember all of youwho raised your hands, by name. Alexander Galich, "On the death of Pasternak”. That’s it. It’s as though the plug has been pulled – one no longer wants to do anything but go away. Preferably to some distant place. Best of all, abroad, so as to escape from the idle talk of one’s compatriots about the national exclusivity of the Chechens. They don’t get tired of repeating that nonsense against the background of ruthless killings of Chechens by Chechens, the abductions and torture which they describe to their own people without a tremble of compassion in their voices and without a trace of visible regret. Of all this, and of much else, I am finally sick to death. Everything I believed in has gone, dried up and withered, become a myth that I would still like to preserve. But no one gives a damn any more about all our old beliefs.
Ten years wasted on an illusion is far too long. I survey the ruins of my personal reality. It’s not only my house, which was burned down during the first Chechen war, but also the death of my mother. She died of a heart attack. If I had been a normal son, I know that she would still be alive. But I was busy with other people's misfortunes, and I didn’t notice that a member of my own family lacked care and company, like oxygen. I simply didn’t give it any attention. And all for what? So that at some point I would finally come to the realization that all of this activity was pointless, that no one wanted it. Not even one’s loved ones. The other day one of my relatives looked at me with pity, and told me about neighbour who had found a job in the police. With his extra payments derived from “emergencies” and “special ops” he had managed to build himself a real palace and put four wheels in his driveway that must have cost as much as a Moon buggy. He knows how to live, was the conclusion my relative drew, but what have you achieved with your articles and brochures? OK, though he’s a relative, he’s not a very bright individual. At some point he decided that only money can be a measure of the happiness, worth and completeness of a person’s life. But I still had my friends and (or so I thought) people who were close to me in spirit. The statements issued by their organizations were pleasing to the eye and ear with the clarity and uncompromising nature of their demands – negotiations, withdrawal of troops, independence! They staged rallies, pickets and hunger strikes, took part in peace marches. They could bravely demonstrate their sorrow and protest for hours along the highway that leads from Ingushetia to Chechnya, express their fundamental disagreement with the policies of the Russian authorities and the republic’s puppet government, as they all called it. They never lost an opportunity to make banners and Ichkerian flags and carry them from place to place. One of those flags still hangs in my office. I kept it as a souvenir. Now other flags hang in the offices of my former friends in Grozny - the Russian tricolor and another one which recalls the Tatar flag, but with a long yellow curling design on the white stripe on the left-hand side. This is said to be an exact copy of an ancient Chechen ornament. My former friends sit on various public commissions and chambers that are run by the selfsame "puppet government". And now, as then, they despise Memorial. Because we didn’t engage in politics, didn’t attend their rallies, didn’t demand independence, call what was happening genocide. We sympathized with them, but considered that our collecting of material about the crimes of the Russian military, of evidence that those crimes were planned and systematic, was equally important. Someone had to do the "menial" work. But we kept away from these brave and noisy people who had chosen to demonstrate their opposition in a direct and uncompromising way. True, we envied them a little. The first of my old friends to defect to the other side was the most "intransigent" one. He started by compiling a pamphlet about the Chechen resistance as a branch of Al-Qaeda. It didn’t matter that he was too embarrassed to show it to his friends. After all, the good thing about shame is that with time is loses its sharp edge and eventually passes altogether. In return for this pamphlet my friend received a "card of privilege” that entitled him to a place of his own at the Grozny “Center for Strategic Studies". The others followed the beaten track. The majority. And so imperceptibly we have become marginalized – renegades who have continued to say and demand what it is no longer done to say and demand. After all, there’s no harm in giving renegades a kick up the backside. It’s not as though anyone is going to be punished for it – rather, they’ll get a smile and an approving nod. With reason, for our work has given them plenty of reasons. My old friends and colleagues came down hard on Memorial in connection with Natalya Estemirova’s murder. They did so in a silly, brutish sort of way. Apparently she was killed because our leaders don’t care enough for their employees. And we naively thought that the blame for this crime, as for other similar crimes, whether in Moscow, Karelia, or other corners of the immense country that is Russia, fell primarily on the authorities. No, we ourselves are to blame. Why? For trying to report information about abductions, torture, killings, burnings of houses and the harassment of people whose relatives have taken to the hills? Doesn’t the claim that we are responsible for Natalya’s death amount to a crude and cowardly justification of what the government and the murderers did to her? Only yesterday those people were her friends. Stupidity is preferable to dishonesty. If for some reason one cannot utter the whole truth, it is better to remain silent. Silence is only wrong when what is at stake is a person’s life, when a person is kidnapped and murdered. Natalya Estemirova’s abduction was not carried out in secret, the kidnappers’ actions were watched by many people, including women who lived in her apartment block. But not one of them went up to Natalya’s daughter’s apartment to tell her what had happened to her mother. No one called our office, the police, or the prosecutor. No one cared. Perhaps it was because they thought: “there but for the grace of God go I.” This mixture of fear, meanness and indifference has been creeping its way into Chechnya’s citizens since the beginning of the second war. The authorities have succeeded in uprooting people’s souls. But why are we still digging around, trying to prove something? It’s not doing anyone any good, after all, and that means it’s not doing us any good either: we have neither house nor home, and we live every day on a knife edge. I don’t understand it any more. It recently occurred to me that it might be because we want to preserve our good name – that fortune which is treasured by our descendants more than money. But that, too, is an illusion. I think it may be the last of those illusions. Someone will always manage to cover your name in mud. And not necessarily people you don’t know – those who will seek you out may be your own folk, the ones who shook your hand at yesterday’s meeting and gave you a serious, meaningful look in the eye... Photo: katya-ganeshi.livejournal.com.
(Translation by DM)
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