A woman from Chechnya, an invalid, sat by a mound of dirty possessions, her three grandchildren wandering in the dust nearby. Their refugee camp was emptying, but they were too poor to buy a ride on the trucks hurriedly heading out of here.
"I have been packed and waiting for three days," said the woman, Manzha Yansuyeva, 78. "I am hoping someone will pity us and help us move."
Following raids by Islamic guerrillas the night of June 21 in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, Chechen refugees are in motion once more, saying they are being blamed for the guerrillas' success and must leave or face retaliation in the night. They are deeply afraid.
PHOTOS: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
The guerrillas overran police stations and checkpoints here early last week, and, dressed in police uniforms themselves, systematically executed law enforcement and military personnel who tried to come to their besieged friends' aid. Nearly 100 people died before the guerrillas withdrew.
In the days since, Russian and Ingush police, wearing ski masks and carrying assault rifles, have accused Chechen refugees of assisting and sheltering the guerrillas.
They have been rounding up Chechen men for questioning and, the refugees say, for beatings.
Thousands of Chechens are heeding what they regard as an implicit message, now fleeing Ingushetia for Grozny, Chechnya's capital.
"We haven't slept for days already," said Yakhita Dzhabrailova, 57.
Grozny hardly invites. Having suffered two wars in a decade, the city is in ruins, occupied by the Russian Army and controlled by grim-faced armed men whose affiliation is rarely clear.
Civilians frequently disappear, seized in what human rights organizations and local residents describe as a mix of kidnappings for ransoms and violence against residents accused of supporting, even knowing, the guerrillas.
A cornerstone of President Vladimir Putin's effort to convince the world that Chechnya has been stabilizing has rested on Chechen refugees returning home.
During the height of the second Chechen war, more than 100,000 Chechens sought refuge on Ingush soil; the Kremlin had hoped that coaxing them home would demonstrate security and hope. But tens of thousands of refugees had not complied with Moscow's wish, choosing a suspended state of poverty and grief in Ingushetia over lingering horrors in Chechnya.
It took the outbreak of violence in Ingushetia -- an expansion of terror, not a reduction -- to put them to motion.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS