Chechens Flee in Karelia
Rioting broke out in the city of Kondopoga, Republic of Karelia, last weekend. After the wake for victims of a fight with Chechens, local residents burned a restaurant, bazaar, stores and kiosks belong to persons from the North Caucasus. The police were able to restore order only a day later after taking more than 100 people into custody. Analysts say that the authorities will use the incident to justify crackdowns and nationalists groups will use it to get closer to authority. The victims, however, say that the causes were purely economic. Criminal bosses used popular discontent to pressure Caucasian businesses to leave the city.
Kondopoga, a city of 35,000, was calm yesterday. Dozens of special forces troops were posted at intersections and in squares. The city court was under especially heavy guard. There, rioters were already facing trial and being sentenced variously to fines, a day in jail or 15 days behind bars.
The disorder began last Wednesday, when two local residents argued with the bartender at the Chaika restaurant, owned by a local Chechen. The Chechens brought in three carloads of reinforcements, with the result of two deaths and five people hospitalized. Retributive action was organized through the Internet and scheduled for Saturday after the funerals and wakes of the two fatalities. A meeting was held in the center of the city with an attendance of more than 2000. Demands were made that local authorities “check all person from the Caucasus and Asia living in the city for involvement in crime and the legality of their residence in the city, and punish the corrupt elements that sell the city to outsiders.” Activists from the Movement against Illegal Immigration came to Kondopoga on Saturday as well.
Then the two-story building housing the Chaika restaurant and a discotheque was burned. That was followed by the Express grocery store, a gaming hall and the central market. Then several kiosks were burned in the village of Berezovka, four kilometers away.
Practically all persons of Caucasian origin fled the city. Two hundred people found shelter with friends and relatives in Petrozavodsk. The Karelian Muslim community provided shelter to those who had no other source of aid. Sixty people were housed in the Uyut Hotel in Petrozavodsk. “We came here to save ourselves from the bombing of Chechnya and now they are driving us out of here,” said Magomed Matiev, leader of the Chechen diaspora in Karelia. “If law enforcement agencies can't protect us, we will ask a neighboring country, Finland, or somewhere, to do so.”
The police did not respond to the situation immediately and the rioters were only dispersed after club-wielding special forces troops arrived from Petrozavodsk. The Kondopoga police force was practically completely replaced in January of this year. Some members of the force were given retirement in connection with growing crime rates and others were dismissed for ties with local entrepreneurs, including Chechens.
Alexander Belov of the Movement against Illegal Immigration noted that the public was not confident of the local authorities' ability to punish the guilty parties in the deaths. Karelia head Sergey Katanandov visited the city after the disorder. Georgy Saratov if the INDEM Fund noted that television coverage of the incident depicted the rioter in a favorable light and predicted that that the authorities would use the incident to justify crackdowns and nationalists groups would use it to get closer to authority. Matiev said that the cause of the original dispute was the restaurant's refusal to make a payoff. He said that crime bosses had attempted to provoke anti-Chechen pogroms in the city before. He added that three Chechens who were wanted by the police in the case had been turned over to them by the Chechen community.
Vladislav Trifonov, Musa Muradov; Natalia Zakharchuk, Petrozavodsk-Kondopoga
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 04, 2006
|
