Somebody else's problem

I've been listening to the news coming from Russia yesterday and today, and suddenly my own "problems" seem quite small and tame. It's difficult to find words for discribing what I feel - the shock of these people taking children as hostages is just... I'm disgusted. I just can't imagine a situation where theae people, who probably have children of their own, gather around a table and plan this - first of all focusing on taking over a school, and then intentionally planning to torture the children by not allowing them any food or water. I don't say this lightly, but this really is evil - even more so than 9/11.

The other questionable issue is of course the decision of the Russian troops to attack the building. They say that this was after the hostage takers started to kill the children, but it's very difficult to say what exactly happened and why, and we'll probably never know. We do know however that Russian troops are trigger happy when it comes to situations like this - remember the siege of the theatre in Moscow couple of years back that ended pretty much exactly the same way.

And behind all this is president Putin, and his decision to deal with Chechenia with force - and although nothing justifies these kind of actions it's important to understand the causes of these situations. People protest against Bush and his war in Iraq, but Chechenia is probably even worse - and rarely mentioned. France and Germany protest loudly against Bush as he's the top dog and it's easy to hate him - and yet the underdog Putin with his deplorable acts in Chechenia is left alone.

It makes me very sad, and I wish strength for people of Beslan.