Ethnic Chechens face revenge attacks in Moscow

Watching the carnage of the Beslan tragedy unfold on television, Arsen Zolaev - along with countless other Russians - wept for the child victims.

But the ethnic Chechen, for years a resident of Moscow, also knew to expect an ugly backlash against his community, aimed at any dark-skinned person from the Caucasus. For some families living on edge, those fears have already been realized with violence.

"Look at my face - you will see what has changed," says Mr. Zolaev, pointing gingerly toward his broken nose, after an apparent revenge attack at the hands of an off-duty policeman outside a nightclub, which left him unconscious and hospitalized for three days.

When a friend ran to help, he says, the officer taunted him and shouted: "I have always been against you [Chechens], and always will be!"

The 100,000 or so ethnic Chechens in the Russian capital are used to hunkering down after any high-profile attack - whether or not committed by Chechen separatists fighting Russian federal forces for independence - knowing that latent xenophobia in such periods lurks especially close to the surface. Tensions now are especially high, and yielding for Chechens here a far more virulent version of the suspicion faced by Muslims in America, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Moscow mayor Yuri Luzkhov now wants a new city ordinance to ban all Chechen visitors and people from places where "counter-terrorism" operations are under way. City police rounded up 11,000 people - many of them Caucasians and Central Asians - in two days of raids two weeks ago, on suspicion of not registering with authorities.

A gang of up to 50 young people on the Moscow subway assaulted four people from the Caucasian Republic of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya, pummeling them and slashing with knives as they screamed: "This is what you get for terrorist attacks!"

The Beslan tragedy marked the culmination of a two-week terror wave that included a Moscow suicide bomb and two downed airliners, causing a total death toll of about 450. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility.

"When such things happen, it's dangerous even to go out in the street; you don't know what you will be charged with," says Arslan Zolaev, Arsen's brother, who runs a Moscow trade company. "Every [Chechen] feels the change - there is no sense of personal security."

"This hatred is artificially imposed on simple people," says Arslan. "Educated Russians understand that nationalism means nothing. But youth and others see TV, and conclude that everything bad that's happening is blamed on a certain nationality. For 10 years, Chechens have been blamed for everything."

Arsen, a freelance photographer, says that Russian neighbors who know the family are "quite sympathetic," make visits, and have taken his pregnant wife to the hospital in their car. Some police, too, who have worked in Chechnya have been kind - or at least not hostile.

But every Chechen family in Moscow can tell stories of harassment, which seem as common as tales of brutality meted out by federal forces in Chechnya during two wars in the past decade.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3