Russia's hostage ordeal has focused the world's attention on the plight of the Chechen Republic and the Russian response to its demands, reports Shohdy Naguib from Moscow The news of the Russian hostage crisis first came to me in an ICQ message from a friend. At first I thought it was a joke with a punch-line to follow, but instead what followed was a URL of the news item on the BBC Web site. The return of Russia's theatre and cultural life has been part of the push towards democracy. Moscow has become the modern artistic hub, housing the country's revival of the arts. A widely publicised treatment of a literary epic from the early Soviet era transformed into a grandiose musical show featuring a cast of young talented artists and highlighted with the landing on stage of a full- sized dive-bomber has become a main attraction in Moscow. The show, "Nord-Ost" is wildly popular, and never fails to sell-out. Upon reading of the setting of the hostage crisis Shakespeare's revelation "All the world is a stage and all the people are players" flashed into my mind. Indeed, this hostage crisis brusquely reminded the cosmopolitan Muscovites of the unending suffering that the masses in the periphery of the former empire still endure. The seeming distance between the horrific situation in Chechnya and the daily life of the citizens and constituents of Russia, who are supposedly capable of influencing a solution to the Chechen problem through democratic means, was swiftly removed to reveal the reality and the horror of the raging civil war. The initial impact of the "information bomb" that exploded in the heart of Moscow on that fateful night seemed to have shattered the mass media cabal to present the Chechen separatists as drugged mercenary robots. The chaotic reports of the first day gave glimpses of people in flesh and blood: young and unversed in propaganda, partisans, rather than terrorists, whose naïve demand to put an immediate end to the corporate driven war was so painfully reminiscent of the idealistic feats of a distant mythology. There can be no doubt that many of those who watched television that day experienced an awakening of a sort, however brief, when they could clearly see that those were people just like themselves and yet Chechen suffering was an untold story. The announcer's attempts to contain this wanton disclosure and to stay within the official guidelines were pathetic. Some of the official vernacular could be interpreted with ease: the military actions in the Chechen Republic should not be referred to as "war" but as "anti- terrorism". Moreover, the political background of the ongoing conflict is of course a no-no subject and the terrorist's message is not to be aired under any circumstances. In order to abide by the government guidelines the TV correspondents showered the viewers with super-urgent reports of the hostages' well being, food and water supply, even the conditions of sanitary facilities. A hostage who managed to contact the channel in order not to plead for help but to denounce the government's policy of war in Chechnya was promptly interrupted with a question regarding one such trifling issue. The next day a total control of media programming has been finally restored to the proper authorities and the captors gradually lost their so very elusive human face. While their one and only demand to end the war was lost in the torrents of contradicting disinformation. The highjacking of the "Nord-Ost" show is the first undisputed attack by the separatists outside the borders of the Chechen Republic since the 1995 hostage crisis in the city of Budenovsk. The September 1999 blasts that destroyed two apartment buildings in Moscow were attributed to the separatists but the charges were never proved. Meanwhile, the Chechen rebels vehemently denied responsibility for the explosions which killed more than 300 people. Those tragic events served as a pretext for initiating the second Russian campaign against the Chechens, which resulted in a wave of patriotic frenzy that eventually put Russian President Vladimir Putin into office. Three years later it is a widespread opinion that the Federal Security Bureau is seriously implicated in those hideous crimes according to the evidence presented on the Web site www.terror99.ru but until now all the attempts to find the truth have been obstructed. Last week's tragic events strongly suggest that the Chechens have a particular code of combat which, however savage it may appear, still falls short of anonymous massive destruction. With two hostages shot dead, the Russian authorities were taking no chances. They gassed the theatre in a brutal pre-dawn assault that resulted in the death of at least 117 hostages. The war in Chechnya is poisoning Russian society. Inter-ethnic hatred is spreading like a cancer, democratic freedoms are waning while a fearsome power structure emerges to accommodate the ruling class of bureaucrats who have everything except the nobility of the old style aristocracy they are trying to mimic. It is of no consequence what kind of gas was used to kill the hostages, together with their captors, for all of Russians are hostages of their own corrupt government. What matters is that it was used to muzzle the unprecedented demand of the Chechen fighters who reached the heart of Russia, not to negotiate for their own lives, but to die or bring peace to their long-suffering motherland. Their message is still waiting to be heard by the heart of Russia's government -- Stop the War on Chechnya. Related links: www.terror99.ru
