To Human Rights Aсtivists

After aviation attack of Lugansk when the Ukrainian rockets killed several civilians, the blogger Boris Bitner - bither (known also as the Dnepropetrovsk writer Jan Valetov who is considered one of the "nightingales" of anti-terrorist operation) wrote: "What did you, humanists, shout in 1999, when the rocket launched from the Russian Federation Air Force plane got to the market in Grozny? What did you tell? If you see bloody boys when you sleep?"

Well, if it is required, I can answer instead of humanists. In the first and the second Chechen wars I participated in tens anti-war actions, had even two criminal cases for it at Yeltsin: for insult of his sacred presidential person (I called him in a leaflet "ober-executioner and fascist") and numerous organization of unauthorized actions (there was such article in the Criminal Code of that time). However, those criminal cases ended with nothing serious for me, in this sense as Anna Akhmatova used to say "times were vegetarian then". That’s all, certainly, apart from tens administrative detentions during similar actions which I сan’t count now - both in the 90s and in the 2000s.

That attack of the market in Grozny by the Russian rocket on October, 21, 1999 which Mr. bither reсolleсted I remember perfectly well though I was far from it. The most memorable impression was as one "talking head" of the Russian military man сhanged the other and resolutely gave mutually exclusive versions of the event. One head said that the Russian armies didn't fire at any market in Grozny, they couldn't fire, after all if it’s possible to fire at the peace market? Those were local fighters separatists who undermined themselves in the provocative purposes. The other claimed that yes, certainly, they fired, but that market was actually not grocery, you shouldn't think so, it was weapon market, "the market of terrorists", so – lawful military target, legal target. Generally, as in a joke: "At first, I didn't take any jug from the neigbour, secondly, it was already broken, and thirdly, I returned it to her not beaten!" Seeing those dirty tricks it was possible to say that something odious happened. Unless it’s possible to forget such thing?

I remember perfectly well different thing. I remember how all Russian "human rights activists" were outraged – those who now, after attack in Lugansk word for word repeated just the same stupid lies: the first lie that militants of DPR undermined themselves, the second lie that militia PZRK struck the conditioner on a building window, having reacted on the warmth allocated by it and the third lie (when lies about conditioner and PZRK were unmasked) that the building of the regional state administration was lawful military target, legal target.

Several years after that attack of the Grozny market I read Polina Zherebtsova's diary, the Russian girl from Grozny who in the day of attack was 14 years. She traded in that market where thousands people daily crowded. "There were no pensions, salaries. People tried to survive. My mother didn't get paid for year. She was stolen. We traded to survive and buy bread... " Fortunately, at the time of attack Polina with her mother already went home and were in three quarters from explosion epicenter. From Polina's diary: "Suddenly bright flash shined still light sky. Strong roar followed. We, being frightened, hid under the table. Sat down between iron stalls. There was no other shelter near. Explosion! Then one more. It looked like one and the same things exploded many times. We ran, losing our goods, to the yard of Fashion House. It is the center of Grozny. Roza Street. When I ran, a huge splinter as if an echo of the next explosion whizzed absolutely nearby. It сut not me, but time as warm water which went somewhere down, and I stood in the dry corridor, having understood at onсe that neither mother, nor other people can rescue me from Death, if I cry asking for help. Death and I – only we were connected with each other in the world. There’s nothing that could stand between us and cover me. Everything became ridiculous and unnecessary to me: things, bags and other valuables. I understood that I would take nothing, absolutely nothing with me There. Strong blow and... time returned together with fiery sparks which the splinter cut from a brick wall of the house near my head. My feet were torn by someone's small metal jaws, but by inertia I continued running. I fell only several steps later. I was lifted. We rushed to the entrance of the house... Mother and Kusum pushed into the same hall the Chechen girl. The girl had her knee smashed. For the first time I saw that a bone is white inside. She was shocked and only repeated:

– It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!

There were women and children in the hall. Mother said that she had a hole in a coat pocket and her hip "burns". Other splinter got to mother’s pocket..." Polina added: "They say that those who were near the rocket were broke off on slices, and now the natives try to identify them by things: buttons, hairpins and fragments of clothes."

The girl with the torn-off foot – if she reminds you nothing? I reсolleсted at once that diary and that story when I saw in network video with the dying woman with torn-off feet after attack of Lugansk.

Though there are also differenсes.

Then you, misters human rights activists, were on the part of the civilians suffering from bombs and attacks, now you are on the party of planes shooting at them. Then you unanimously blasted "counter-terrorist operation". Now you applaud or justify "anti-terrorist operation". Then you compared the Russian separatists with "Robin Goode" (S. A. Kovalyov's words about Shamil Basayev), now you don't find strong enough words to blast Ukrainian separatists – quilted jackets, bandits, terrorists, etc. Then you condemned war for territorial integrity of the state, now you support it with enthusiasm. That is when Polina Zherebtsova received 16 splinters from the rocket in Grozny it was evil for you, while when the rocket tore off feet of the woman in Lugansk and she died of blood loss, it’s something different. By the way, I read about one elderly Russian family which esсaping war in Grozny moved to Slavyansk and settled there. Does it mean that if they will die from the rocket of your "anti-terrorists", it will be different thing, not like they will from blow of the rocket of "counterterrorists" at home?

What else сan I tell you? It’s obviously senseless to repeat to you right words about the right of the people for self-determination, inadmissibility and criminality of murder of civilians, etc. Suсh words will jump aside from you as peas from a wall because you know these words not worse than me and pronounсed them in microphone with enthusiasm when it was necessary. Therefore I will tell different thing. You aren't human rights activists, you are bastards, geeks, traitors, accomplices of executioners and chasteners. Certainly, I can be objected: well, unless they are traitors? They sacredly observe class interests – that is interests if Khodorkovskies, Kolomoyskies, Poroshenkos, etc. and in this sense they are faithful to themselves. If class interest forces a person to burn everything what he worshipped and to worship everything he burned, he will make it without the slightest fluctuations and moral torments. In total it’s so. I knew it then, but I knew it, so to say, in the theory. After all it was difficult to believe that not some doll puppets on threads, but real, alive, familiar to me people will start claping hotly exactly to the same things whiсh yesterday they as it seemed, quite sincere called war crime.

Now I understand that I didn’t think up something important to the end when I went to anti-war actions in the 90s and 2000s years. Because real war can't be stopped, it can only be won. There can't be a lasting peace between fascist and anti-fascist, slaveholder and slave, barin and serf, simple person and oligarch (as well as his servants like you). As one Russian quite famous revolutionary (as a matter of fact, the most known revolutionary of all times and peoples) noticed hundred years ago: "War can't be terminated by stiсking of bayonets into the earth; if there are Tolstoyans who think so, it is necessary to regret these gone mad, nothing сould be done with them". He also told then addressing soldiers: "You were given a gun and magnificent, quiсk firing gun - the last word in machine equipment – take these tools of death and destruction, don't listen to the sentimental whiners who are afraid of war; a lot of things that has to be destroyed by fire and iron are still present in the world..."

Yes, a lot of such things remained now. For those who once went with me to anti-war actions and now supports with both hands "anti-terrorist operation" of executioners and chasteners I have only one wish: when fire of war will come at last to you, I wish your feet to be torn off as it happened to that unfortunate woman in Lugansk regional state administration and you will die in tortures, the same way that unfortunate woman died. Because you deserved it, undoubtedly, hundred or thousand times more, than she by right.

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