Sakharov

Moscow's Sakharov Museum is currently facing a trial for its exhibit criticizing the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in society. But not deterred, it is also presently hosting a new exhibit on Chechnya. Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper has a feature on the exhibit by Carolynne Wheeler, who writes:

The fighting, and the spillover attacks that have touched Beslan, Moscow and other Russian cities, have been documented visually in a new, daring exhibit by Moscow's only museum dedicated to uncovering human-rights abuses. The show is called War in Chechnya Has Brought Terrorism to Russia.

"After Beslan, on Sept. 4 when everything had reached its terrible end, it was Saturday and I couldn't stay at home. So I came here, and I was thinking what can we do?" said Sakharov Museum and Public Centre co-founder and director Yuri Samodurov.

The museum, established in 1996 to archive the works of Russian scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, is dedicated to recording human-rights abuses under past regimes and in modern Russia, from remembering lives lost in Stalin's work camps to showing banned films about the war in Chechnya. It operates out of two small buildings on the edge of the Moscow city centre, surviving on modest donations and the dedication of its staff.

Samodurov is a soft-spoken man who, with his greying fringe of hair, wire-rimmed glasses and tweed jacket, more resembles a university professor than a radical rights activist. But his role as museum curator has taken on a new dimension: He and two staff members are now being tried on charges of inciting religious hatred, for permitting an exhibit in January of 2003 entitled Caution! Religion, which questioned the role of the Russian Orthodox Church. The case, sent back to the Moscow prosecutor's office this summer for lack of evidence, has returned to court for a new trial; Samodurov is scheduled to appear again on Wednesday.

He says he fully expects pressure to shut the current exhibit down -- a reasonable expectation at a time when the editor of the newspaper Izvestia was fired for his choice of a front-page photograph depicting a woman in Beslan mourning a dead child. The same photograph was used in newspapers around the world, including The Globe and Mail. That Izvestia front page is among the newspapers on exhibit.

"We are losing political freedoms," Samodurov said. "How can we fight? We can fight with this exhibit. . . .

"Many people write about who we are fighting against," he said. "But I've never encountered this question: What are we fighting for in Chechnya? . . . The war cannot be won unless we know what we are fighting for."

The whole article is well worth reading, as is the Chechnya Brief to be found at the Andrei Sakharov Foundation's website.