Meeting in memory of the victims of recent terrorist attacks in Russia will be held in Moscow on February 28, 2006. The victims will be represented by several persons from Beslan, the “Nord Ost” Association (Moscow, 2002), relatives of those who died on board of planes blown up in August, 2004 (“Shattered Destiny” Committee). The victims will meet with Ella Pamfilova, Chairman of the Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation. Media will not be admitted.
Russian news agencies silence the fact of the meeting.
Nevertheless women from the “Voice of Beslan” Public Committee vested their hopes in Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who will head an independent international investigation of the Beslan tragedy.
On February 22 representatives of the ‘Voice of Beslan’ Committee managed to meet with Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The meeting took place only due to the persistence of the activists from the ‘Voice of Beslan’, who waited for Ms. Arbour at the entrance of the governmental building in Vladikavkaz. The mothers, who had lost their children in the Beslan hostage-taking, had a brief conversation with the UN commissioner, voicing their demands. They asked for help in conducting an independent international investigation of the Beslan tragedy. The women from the ‘Voice of Beslan’ handed to Ms. Arbour a letter for Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General. In this letter they asked him to intervene in the situation around the official investigation of the case. During her trip to the North Caucasus Ms. Arbour was accompanied by Ella Pamfilova who witnessed the conversation with the Beslan women.
In February seven women from the ‘Voice of Beslan’ held a ten-day hunger strike protesting against the curbing the trial on Nurpashy Kulayev, the only terrorist surviving the seizure of the school in Beslan. The trial was curbed despite of the fact that many important witnesses had not been not questioned.
Translated by Olga Radayeva
