Hatred swells in town bereft of its children

By ANDREW OSBORN


BESLAN - "Lida you are a bitch. Lida you are a mistake of nature. We will kill you. How could you sell out other people's children? You betrayed our children."

The graffiti scratched into the blood-smeared classroom walls of the Beslan school points the finger of blame for what happened here on September 3.

"Lida" Tsalieva is the target of much of the anger: the School Number One's headmistress survived the terrible siege.

Many local people argue she was responsible for the children's welfare. They say she gave the gunmen the opportunity to plan their attack when she hired a group of Chechen and Ingush workmen to renovate the dilapidated building.

The "workmen" transformed into 32 hostage-takers a few months later, having used the renovation to conceal weapons beneath the school's wooden floorboards.

"Lida you are the whole world's enemy," more graffiti says.

As this small Caucasian town prepares today to mark the 40th and final day of mourning for more than 330 people who died, few of the bereaved have found peace. Many are looking for someone to blame.

In the Russian Orthodox tradition, the soul of the departed is supposed to ascend to heaven on the 40th day of mourning and "normal" life may resume, but few in Beslan believe their lives will be normal again.

Some direct their anger at Tsalieva, others at the Chechens and Ingush who made up the majority of the hostage-takers, and others at the region's authorities, who stubbornly refuse to take responsibility.

Deprived of anywhere to vent their feelings, those involved have made the school's bullet-ridden shell a canvas for their frustration, bewilderment and hatred.

Added to the now-withered floral tributes, candles and "We will never forget you" tributes are dozens of vengeful messages screaming from walls caked in blood.

As the rain fell yesterday, hundreds of people traipsed around its corridors sobbing and staring listlessly at the devastation, a routine followed repeatedly.

Dressed in black, women cried and men shook with their grief. "Ruchsag Ut" - Ossetian for Rest in Peace - was scratched into the building's shattered walls.

The gymnasium, where most of the victims died when the roof was brought down by a series of powerful explosions, remains a shrine.

Its rain-soaked floorboards are crowded with toys and dolls, as well as chocolate bars and water bottles, a reminder that the hostage-takers did not allow their young captives to eat or drink.

Many mourners had made their way here from the town's unnaturally full cemetery. They say they have not tired of wandering daily around the eerie corridors, looking for answers they cannot find.

A large crucifix marks the centre of the gym. At the side, a rain-soaked photocopy of a picture of Madina Kusova, a pupil, stares back.

"You were a good person," someone has written. "Raising a hand to a child is not the action even of a beast but of a demon or of Satan himself," reads another message etched into the wall.

Scrawled in a blue pen above a disturbing patchwork of blood stains in a corridor from the gym, another message reads: "You will be punished!!!"

On a staircase to the first floor, Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord who claimed he organised the school seizure, is singled out. "Burn in hell Basayev" says one inscription.

Throughout the classrooms, piles of schoolbooks still cover the floor, though much of the detritus from the siege - spent shells and blood-stained clothing - has been removed by souvenir hunters.

Yesterday Episcope Feofan, head of the Russian Orthodox church in nearby Vladikavkaz, paid a visit to the school gym.

For a few minutes, the bass voices of an Orthodox choir filled the room and weeping women stopped to listen, many crossing themselves during the prayers and hymns.

"We must build a cathedral here," Feofan told his rain-drenched audience. "I wouldn't even want to break down these walls but leave them as they are."

He urged his listeners not to take revenge on those they held responsible.

"We are hoping for one thing; patience and a peaceful solution," he said. "Ossetia is courageous and we can deal with this tragedy. In no circumstances should there be revenge. Revenge is for the weak."

Responding to calls from Russian President Vladimir Putin for church support for the fight against terror, he talked about global terrorism.

"This was a reminder of what evil can do. It was also a reminder to all mankind that there can be no haven from terrorism."

After his speech, a strange silence enveloped the school. Its corridors emptied.

But Feofan's advice appeared to fall on deaf ears in many quarters. Outside a house near the school, a crowd of men had gathered to remember Albina Shotaeva, 28, and her 7-year-old daughter, Zalina.

"They were both burnt in the school," said Soslan Beg, a relative.

Dragging hard on a cigarette, he whispered that he felt the need to take action.

"Our mentality is to take action so that something like this never happens again."

A former colonel in the Soviet Army and a former pupil of School Number One, Beg, 54, said the moment of revenge was close.

"We know where these bandits are, we even know which houses they live in. When the time comes I will take a machine gun and go with the others to punish these terrorists.

"We need to sort this matter out ourselves. Many of those who suffered have been sent away to clinics in the Crimea and the Black Sea to try and defuse feelings here but when they get back there will be revenge. Every second person here has a machine gun at home."

Inside the school Anatoly, an elderly man wearing a black leather jacket and a black flat cap, seemed to be on the edge of reason.

Staring around a ransacked philosophy classroom beneath portraits of Voltaire and Pascal, he can speak only in questions and his words come out unnaturally quickly.

"How was it possible? Why did they not act? Why did they not storm the school immediately? Why did they not enter into proper negotiations? I would have taken a child's place if I could."

He says his niece died in the siege and his two grandchildren are badly injured and have been sent away for treatment.

His eyes are full of pain. His frenetic hand movements belie a deep trauma.

Another man is less sanguine. His shouting fills the corridors. He rails against the school's headmistress and the region's much criticised president, Alexander Dzasokhov.

"They should all be hanged," he screams, his breath heavy with the odour of alcohol like many of the men wandering the school's corridors.

"It was negligence and incompetence.

"There used to be the sound of children playing here but now there is nothing."

- INDEPENDENT