Letter to the Editor.

Needless to say, after Iraq we really don't have any right to tell any other country what to do about their human rights abuses...
[See my other letters to the Editor here...]

To the Star News in Wilmington N.C.

Russia's abuses spawn terror

EDITOR:

In response to the Sept. 3 editorial "A horror we should heed":

Judging by the tragic history of the conflict between Russia and Chechnya launched in 1995 by Vladimir Putin, supposedly in retaliation for apartment bombings in Russia which were never proved to be the work of Chechens, there was little chance the school hostage-taking crisis in North Ossetia could have gone any other way than "horribly wrong."

The severe human rights abuses perpetrated by the Russian security forces against the people of Chechnya, which have resulted in more than 260,000 of them being displaced and 170,000 more forced to seek refuge in Ingushetia, according to Human Rights Watch, to say nothing of the thousands killed by indiscriminate shelling and summary executions of suspected "terrorists," makes it hardly surprising this vicious war of aggression wouldn't eventually snap back on the Russian civilian population.

What is surprising is the total lack of any condemnation of Russian atrocities by either the United States government or the European Union member states. The silence has been deafening.

The misleading notion put forward by this administration that Russia is our partner in the "war on terror," is either a massively uninformed misreading of the situation or a cynical attempt to keep President Putin sweet and keep the Russian crude flowing.