The Fathers of Beslan and the Silver Mercedes Jeep - III

Here is the last part of the article:

This would seem to be a very simple choice. A choice between the truth and the lie. From the wings, it seems trivial. On the spot it proves to be very difficult.

This choice is like a picture on TV. It’s from a distance that a cat on the screen looks like a cat. But close to it decomposes into coloured dots. Thus it is with a choice - when you are inside the situation, it always decomposes into coloured dots.

Close to, it’s very simple to convince oneself that the mother of the murdered child is asking about the weapons that were hidden in the school not because she wants to learn truth. But because she has been set to do this by your political enemy, a merchant of vodka or narcotics. Or the agents of the CIA. Or the West, which wants to ruin Russia. True, everyone is talking about the weapons under the floor of the library. But if this is admitted, then your close relatives and friends in the law enforcement agencies may suffer. Therefore it’s better to let her be an agent of the CIA. Better to smash the windows in the teachers’ committee. Better to terrorize the women in mourning from your silver Mercedes.

It is terrible to imagine what the mothers of the murdered children are being subjected to by the men who are supposed to protect them. Men whose children also perished, but who were connected through business with the cops, who let the terrorists through, and with the Kremlin, which appoints people to authority. These men justify their behaviour. They say: we will take revenge in a year’s time. Earlier is impossible. Until a year of mourning has passed, one cannot behave in a strident fashion. It’s against out customsIt’s shameful.

What year? A year later, trial of Kulayev is over, the i’s have been dotted, the situation is played out. A year later, were it not for the mothers of Beslan, there would be a terrorist act carried out by foolish terrorists who began by making no demands, and ended by blowing up their own bomb. A year later there is no one to take revenge on: the terrorists are dead, and the Kremlin has nothing to do with it.

It was the death of their children that changed the mothers of Beslan from oppressed housewives to people, who rose to the heights civic courage. Lie killed their children, and they want to know truth. Some of them are even ready to forgive Nurpashi Kulayev if he will help them to learn this truth. This is a greater act of Christian mercy than it is possible to demand of anyone, ever.

And in response to this courage the new head of the republic Taymuraz Mamsurov says in an interview that "it is simply impossible to require reasonable behaviour from them in the state they are in". When the mother of a murdered child says: "I want to know who gave the order to the sniper", I don’t have a sense that this is unreasonable behaviour. I have a sense that only her courage is making it possible for the head of the republic to repeat after the women: "I still have questions, the answers to which I shall seek for myself.”

Why intimidate the women? If you’re a man – come and talk to them. Say: "I also want to take revenge on those who murdered our children. I also want to know the truth ". Say that you were forced to dissemble before the Kremlin, but that you also want to take revenge. If it comes to that – go down to the FSB and report that you just went down to the mothers of Beslan committee to reassure them.

Why intimidate women who want to know the truth?