At first it looked like any other rubbish dump

by Andy on February 28, 2005

With news like this, is it any wonder that the people of Beslan are turning on their local authorities?

At first it looked like any other rubbish dump — a few clothes, some old shoes, broken tables and chairs.

But when residents of Beslan looked closer at the junk a mile outside their town this week, they made out clumps of hair and shreds of dried skin.

In a flash it dawned on them: Russian authorities had hurriedly cleared out Middle School No 1 after the siege ended on September 3 last year and dumped everything here in an abandoned quarry.

Within an hour of Tuesday’s discovery, relatives of the 331 victims descended on the grim pile to search for traces of their loved ones.

“First they let those bandits kill our children, then they let the dogs eat their bodies,” said Susanna Dudiyeva, head of the Committee of Beslan Mothers, who lost her 12-year-old son in the siege. “Why did they not tell us about it?” she asked The Times. “It should have been examined, then buried or burnt.”

Via A Step at a Time.

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{ 1 comment }

Aussiegirl March 2, 2005 at 10:23 pm

Those poor people! Imagine finding your loved one’s remains thrown out like garbage. But then, what can you expect from a government who simply used these horrific attacks to consolidate and centralize its power rather than ensuring that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again and finding the culprits. When the Twin Towers fell, every bit of thousands of tons of debris was sifted with a fine sieve to retrieve the smallest bits of human remains. Kind of shows which government values its people. At some point the anger of the Russian people is going to boil over — we’ll see if Putin shoots at them in the streets.

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