Putin's Castration Fantasies
President Vladimir Putin has threatened to castrate a German journalist concerned about human rights in Chechnya. Read these excerpts about the Kremlin's campaign against Muslims:
There are some 23 million Muslims in Russia, constituting approximately 15 percent of the population and forming the largest religious minority. Approximately 1 million Muslims live in Moscow. Elsewhere, Muslims live predominantly in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, the northern Caucasus, and the Volga region
Muslims constitute the majority in seven republics of Russia, including Chechnya and Tatarstan. Both Tatarstan and Chechnya-Ingushetia (as it was then) refused to sign the Federation Treaty in 1992. Tatarstan negotiated a separate treaty which gave it special rights as a “state associated with” Russia. Bashkortostan, another Muslim republic, followed suit in establishing confederal rather than federal relations with Moscow.
Muslims throughout Russia have been demonised by the mass media as “Islamic terrorists”. In April 2004, the Union of Journalists of Russia accused the country’s press of stirring up international and religious discord. It charged that Moscow had “no newspapers that [we]re free of Islamophobic, racist and fascist publications.” In the same month, a group of Russian Muslims brought an action against the newspaper Izvestia and 2 of its columnists for the publication of an article containing calls to genocide of the Muslims and to a war with the Islamic world. Although, the plaintiffs were defeated at the initial stage, they are appealing the decision. Should they ultimately, succeed, Islamophobia in its various guises would be officially declared illegal.
Currently, a young executive director of the Badir publishing house is being prosecuted for igniting religious hatred after printing ‘Monotheism’, a book by Abdul Wahhab, the 18th century founder of the Wahhabi Islamic movement. It is "Wahhabism," which technically refers to the austere form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. In Russia, where a moderate brand of Sunni Islam has been the traditional faith, the alleged importation of Wahhabism has come to mean something akin to "terrorism," and is the most damaging charge one can hurl against a religious Muslim here short of accusing him of treason. Such sentiment has led to a formal ban on "Wahhabism" in Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkariya.
The Chechen resistance fighters are regularly accused of Wahhabism, and Russian news media routinely raise the alarm. The FSB often confiscates Islamic religious material --even copies of the Qur’an -- as seditious "Wahhabite" literature. The term has become a convenient rubric applied to Muslims whose work offends authorities. Journalist, Farid Nugumanov is under investigation by the FSB for his alleged Wahhabite sympathies after publishing an article criticizing the decision to build an Orthodox church next to the Muslim cemetery in his majority-Muslim village. He not only lost the job he had held for 16 years, but also found himself publicly labelled "the Wahhabi."
After being questioned on Russia’s human rights record in Chechnya. Putin rebuked the reporter with the following diatribe: "They are talking about the need to kill all kaffirs, infidels, all non-Moslems, or Crusaders, as they say. If you are a Christian, you are in danger! …But if you decide to reject your faith and become an atheist, you are also subject to liquidation according to their way of thinking. ... You are in danger! …If you decide to become a Muslim, even that won't save you. Because they consider traditional Islam also to be hostile to the goals they put forward. Even in that case you are in danger! ...If you want to go all the way and become a Muslim radical and are ready to get circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. We are a multi-confessional country, we have experts in this field, too. I will recommend that they carry out the operation in such a way that nothing grows back." (‘Putin Offers Reporter a Circumcision,’ The Moscow Times, 13 Nov. 2002)
..that circumcision and castration are two different...ahh... conditions. I gather the head line went a little too far(?)..well they could be holding back on what Putin really told the reporter(?) ACKK! I'm outta here..nice eye catching headline, though; LOL! Peace
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...so it looks like a deliberate and dishonest disinformation campaign on your part.
Your anti-Putin, anti-Russia tirades are becoming a bit boring. Statements such as 'Muslims throughout Russia have been demonised by the mass media as “Islamic terrorists”' is simply untrue. While I was living in the country, I heard plenty of references to 'Chechen terrorists' but never, ever did I hear the terms "Islamic terrorists".
Chechnya never was a nation. It was was a territory in Caucasus Mountains, populated by tribes (teips) of Semitic peoples. It is not and never was a state. There was no government, monarch, currency or alphabet. The teips lived partly from their livestock and largely from
fighting with and robbing from each other as well as other nations around - Cossaks in
the north, Georgians and Armenians in the south. The annexation of the territory by Russia in 1859 was at least in part due to the warmongering nature of the Chechen people and their destabilising influence on the region.
Putin told the German journalist: "I will recommend that they carry out the operation in such a way that nothing grows back" -- he was threatening him with castration. The headline, unfortunately, is no exaggeration.
The reality is that Putin regularly expresses himself in bloodthirsty mob slang. Gangsterism has become the height of fashion in today's Russia.
If you or other readers find genocide boring, then that is your problem. You're welcome to turn a blind eye to it.
Sullivan: your version of history exactly mirrors the Russian propaganda myth -- i.e. these mountain savages ought to be grateful that white people came and brought them civilisation.
Do you know nothing about the history of the decades and decades of resistance in the Caucasus to tsarist imperialist expansion?
Or mabe you have the same racist opinion of the Iraqis and Afghanis? Just a bunch of savages in need of our Western values?
The Russians are systematically exterminating the Chechens. Russian politicians have gone on record talking of "war till the last Chechen" -- the aim is to clear the Caucasus entirely of "dark" people...
Sullivan:
On my part? Are you sure? Not one thing I have posted or commented has been false. But your falsehoods are a-plenty. Let's take a closer look:
Are the Chechens Semitic? The Chechen teips come from many races -- including the Indo-European Aryans, the Turkic peoples, as well as Semites. But no one calls them a "Semitic people". This is untrue.
And even if it had been true, what exactly is your message? That if a people has Semitic origin (as the Iraqis and Palestinians have, as well as many Afghani tribes) that it is fine and dandy to exterminate them?
Go onto a Russian search engine and type in "Islamic terrorists". See how many newspaper articles appear with that very phrase. My search came up with over a thousand.
Before you go about accusing others of dishonesty, take a look in the mirror.
Contrary to the impression you have, I view the Chechen situation as being poles apart from that of the Iraqis or the Palestinians. I don't see any evidence of a systematic extermination of the Chechen people and I view claims of such an extermination with the same skepticism as I would any other claims of holocaust or genocide.
Perhaps the Chechens are not semitic. Whether they are or not is of no importance. What has been recorded through centuries of history is that their primary business was always war... not agriculture or any other peaceful occupation.
It is also noteworthy is that they hail from the same part of the world that was previously included in the territory of a kingdom formed by another bunch of notorious troublemakers, the Khazars.
Your statement that "Gangsterism has become the height of fashion in today's Russia" is at least a decade out of date, and what remains of it is almost exclusively the province of members of one tribe.
Over the past year or two there has been concerted vilification campaign directed against a Russia that is increasingly displaying economic independence and self-determination. Putin is the focus of this smear campaign.
Putin smears himself -- with the blood of well over a hundred thousand dead Chechens. The most conservative estimates put the Chechen genocide at 10-15% of the population. The higher estimates suggest upwards of 25% of the population. So you deny that this is systematic genocide? What about the concentration camps, or "filtration camps" to use Putin's euphemism? Do you deny that they exist too? Putin doesn't deny it. Putin declared with his own tongue: "We'll whack them in the john," meaning, "We'll kill the Chechens in the toilets". Do you deny that he speaks in ganster slang? One Russian has even set up an entire site satirising Putin as a mafia boss.
But you've shown your true colours. You say that some Chechens might have Khazar blood in them, so their extermination can only be a good thing.
So from now on we can tag your comments with the "RACIST SUPREMACIST" tag normally reserved for Zionist Fascists.
There is something very seriously wrong with your heart, Sullivan.
Sullivan: You said:
Well, read this:
"A few months beforehand, in October 2005, Gazeta.ru reported that the Presidential Administration had circulated to central television stations a list of terms to be used when covering conflict in the northern Caucasus. "Wahhabi" should be replaced by "Islamic extremist", "jihad" by "diversional-terrorist activity" and "Chechen terrorism" by "international terrorism", the Russian news website stated."