World Chechnya Day 2007 marks the 63rd anniversary of the 1944 Stalinist deportations of the entire Chechen and Ingush people to the steppes of Central Asia. More than half of the 500,000 people who were to be forcibly transported died in transit or in massacres committed by Soviet troops. Those who survived the journey were left facing starvation and disease in the harsh winters of Siberia and Central Asia.
Within days an entire people had been erased from the land of their ancestors. Overnight Chechnya and Ingushetia were emptied of their native inhabitants, and every reference to Chechnya was removed from official maps, records and encyclopaedias. In 2004 the European Parliament passed a motion that recognised this catastrophe as Genocide.
World Chechnya Day is intended to commemorate the dignity and resilience of a people who, against all odds, refused to be erased from existence.
We, at Save Chechnya Campaign, would like to invite you to come and commemorate this tragic event with us at a memorial service to be held at 3pm on Friday 23 February, at the Yalta Memorial, Cromwell Gardens, South Kensington SW7 2SL (behind the Ismaili Centre).
There will be events in universities across the UK to mark World Chechnya Day. In particular the School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS, University of London, will be hosting Stanley Greene's award-winning exhibition, 'Open Wound' all day with talks and documentary showings in the evening. Please visit http://www.worldchechnyaday.org/ for more details of events within the UK and elsewhere.
We hope you will be able to attend and we look forward to what, we hope, will be a very successful event.
Best regards, ws
H. Q. Secretary, Save Chechnya Campaign
KC
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