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NEWS & LETTERS, NOVEMBER 2003Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryChechnya electionsRussia staged sham elections in October in an attempt to give a veneer of legality to its genocidal occupation of Chechnya. Since 2000, when Russia re-launched its war of conquest against this predominantly Muslim and linguistically distinct people that has long sought an independent state, it is estimated that up to 100,000 Chechens have been killed, out of a population of only one million. The elections gave official sanction to the rule of Akhmad Kadyrov, a widely hated Chechen turncoat. Russian authorities boosted the sparse turnout for this essentially one-candidate election by allowing members of their 100,000-strong occupation army to vote for Kadyrov. Over the past year, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has justified his Chechen War as part of the global “war against terrorism,” both the U.S. and the European Union, which used to raise mild questions about Chechnya, have grown silent. Their silence has been abetted by the tragic resort to suicide attacks on Russian civilians by desperate Chechen fighters. |
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