Word: beslan
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...standard, however, the past few weeks have been grim ones for activists. In addition to the deaths of Politkovskaya and Litvinenko, Lev Ponomarev, a veteran campaigner, was arrested and jailed for three days in late September for organizing a memorial for the victims of the Beslan school hostage tragedy. His crime: holding an unauthorized rally. In early October, Manfred Nowak, a United Nations rapporteur on torture, was forced to postpone a fact-finding trip to Chechnya and the northern Caucasus after he was told that his intention to visit detention facilities unannounced and interview detainees would contravene Russian...
...Russia's war in the Caucasus, was named one of TIME's European Heroes in 2003. Though she enjoyed the respect of many on both sides of the conflict, she was hated by hard-liners and often the target of death threats; Politkovskaya was mysteriously poisoned during the 2004 Beslan school-hostage crisis while setting up negotiations with the Chechen separatist hostage-takers...
...North Caucasus was evident during the 2002 hostage debacle when Chechen terrorists seized a Moscow theater and hundreds of people inside. Politkovskaya had been one of the very few people allowed by the Chechen group to enter the theater to negotiate on behalf of the hostages. During the Beslan School hostage crisis in 2004, Politkovskaya was badly poisoned (by state agents, she alleged), just as she was on the verge of brokering talks between senior Russian officials and Chechen separatist leaders to save the children. She barely survived that experience, but the death threats kept coming. Her enemies finally succeeded...
...threaten our children. In the world of international terrorism, children and schools are considered soft targets, providing high visibility for terrible acts that enrage and demoralize civilized communities. Just two years ago, this reality was confirmed when Chechen rebels invaded an elementary school in the remote Russian city of Beslan, killing more than 150 children and an equal number of teachers and other adults...
...systems that can prevent every conceivable act of violence in the nation's vast network of schools. But we can reduce the chances of the next Columbine or Nickel Mines by taking some basic actions now. And if these actions help discourage some terror organization from planning an American Beslan, all the better...