The Voice of Beslan gets accused of extremism

Nazran/Agency Caucasus – The Voice of Beslan, a civil society organization, is under huge pressure to give up its foundational mission to get the whole truth disclosed years after a 2004 incident at a school in the village of Beslan, North Ossetia, turned into a disaster, with hundreds left dead and several hundreds more injured, when the federal forces of Russia intervened in it.

Set up to help the Beslan victims to make their voice heard, the Voice of Beslan accuses the government of concealing the truth about what really happened in Beslan–a suitably ready reason for its attempted designation in court by the Chief Prosecutor of Nazran, capital of the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, as an organization with an ‘extremist’ as well as ‘illegal’ stance.

Ella Kesayeva, Co-President of the Voice of Beslan, said that she got the court file in question. Kesayeva also said that the Chief Prosecutor of the Ingush Republic brought a charge of extremism against the organization after he read the organization’s online publications that date back to December 2006. According to the Chief Prosecutor, Kesayeva said, the organization had accused ‘s President Vladimir Putin of cooperating with the militants who took hostage hundreds of schoolchildren as well as adults in the Beslan School Number One in 2004. "The Voice of Beslan asked in its online publications at that time for help from both members of the United States Congress and the United States President George W. Bush to set up an objective inquiry into the Beslan school siege crisis. The publications of the Voice of Beslan do not contain extremist statements," said Kesayeva.

The Voice of Beslan have called for an international investigation of the Beslan terrorist attack and called on the European Union and the European Parliament to help establish one, as well as on the leadership to publish satellite photographs of the school made during the siege. They have also asked private journalists who have any material on the attack to present them for an investigation. RE/FT