Tens of thousands of Russians massed outside the Kremlin on Tuesday to express their anger at terror after the Beslan school hostage tragedy, as families pressed on with an agonising search for loved ones still missing.
A sea of people, brandishing banners, religious insignia and Russian flags stood in grief at the deaths of the 335 hostages and rescuers killed in the hostage siege and the 100 killed in plane attacks and a Moscow suicide bombing in past weeks.
The Interfax agency cited official police figures as saying 130 000 people turned out for the rally, which took place to the accompaniment of stirring Russian traditional music.
”Terror is worse than plague”, ”The enemy will be defeated” and ”The victory will be ours” read some of the slogans on banners carried by the demonstrators, who braved the same driving rain that marked funerals in Beslan the day earlier.
”We are not weak we are strong, strong, strong … we will win,” said Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov in an impassioned speech, shaking his fist in the air, and echoing the patriotic atmosphere at the gathering.
”How can you kill children and shoot them? I came because Russia was slapped in the face and we will not take it,” said Valery, a pensioner with a row of medals proudly strapped to his lapel.
Many of those who turned out in front of Saint Basil’s Cathedral for the demonstration carried images of St George slaying the dragon.
The rally, which was backed by the local authorities and lasted barely an hour, was marked by strict security, including sniffer dogs used to patrol the area in advance of the rally.
However, the demonstration attracted criticism for being an officially approved expression of protest rather than the spontaneous outpouring of grief seen in Spain after the March 11 attacks on Madrid.
”I would have preferred if it the Russians reacted like the Spanish, who didn’t wait to be called out and went out on to the street altogether to say no to terror,” said Elena Frantsuskaya (48).
Beslan burials continue
Meanwhile, the agony of Beslan continued.
About 70 more burials were expected, while relatives whose missing loved ones have yet to be accounted for as dead or wounded held an emotional meeting with local authorities.
These relatives, clutching photographs of loved ones, exist in the torture of uncertainty. Some claim they even glimpsed their children in the anarchy after the hostage siege ended.
Mzivinari Ochishvili, whose 12-year-old daughter, Bella, is missing, said: ”We have been everywhere, in all the hospitals and in all the morgues. A classmate of hers saw her being taken away in an ambulance and we haven’t heard of her since.”
Despite Russia’s grief, questions remain over the Kremlin’s role in the three-day siege that ended with an unplanned storming by security forces and horrific scenes of loss and carnage.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin echoed international concerns that the circumstances of the assault, triggered after two massive explosions in the gymnasium where more than 1 000 hostages were held, are still unexplained.
”We wish to express both our solidarity in the face of this terrorist act against Russia, but we also wish to have all the necessary information,” Raffarin said on RTL radio.
President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with British newspapers, ruled out a public inquiry into the events and scoffed at any notion that the authorities would negotiate with militants from Chechnya.
A former member of the Russian special forces told the Vremya Novostei newspaper that troops knew a successful raid on the school was not possible, adding they had not even been given a plan of the building.
”All the specialists agreed that for several reasons it was impossible to opt for an operation of force in the school,” said Igor Senin, president of the veterans’ association for the crack Alpha anti-terrorist unit.
Criticism of the authorities, largely relayed through the liberal press, has focused on how Moscow ministers kept their distance from the town of Beslan, preferring to let local officials handle the siege and take the flak.
So far the only political victim has been North Ossetian interior minister Kazbeck Dzantiev, who stepped down at the weekend.
”We are tired of digesting any kind of information feeling like obedient slaves. We need to find out the truth … We have the right to ask questions,” one of the original organisers of the Moscow protest, radio station head Vladimir Solovyev, told Izvestia.
Concerns about press freedom in Russia were amplified after the editor of Izvestia was sacked by the newspaper’s tycoon owner for his ”emotional” coverage of the hostage crisis, which included a full-page photo of a man carrying a terrified girl to safety.
The Beslan catastrophe was the worst of its kind in modern Russian history and the latest in a string of recent attacks that included the deaths of 90 in the downing of two passenger jets and a suicide bombing outside a crowded Moscow subway station that killed 10. — Sapa-AFP