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 On
Wednesday, September 1, 2004, the first day of school in Beslan,
Russia, an armed Chechen rebel group captured more than 1,500 children,
teachers and parents as they were participating in the opening ceremonies.
The Chechen captors initially shot and killed a number of children
and adults, then forced the remaining captives to crowd into the
small school gymnasium where they kept them without food or water
for three days. By Friday the children were sick with heat, dehydration
and starvation, the Russian government was frantic for a resolution,
and the rebels had crossed some imaginary line of no return and began
shooting and killing those remaining. Finally, they set off a series
of explosives throughout the school, turning the building into a
fireball. When the carnage and heat in the building became overwhelming,
some of the children tried to escape. As they ran across the school
playground, the rebels shot them in the back. In the end, the school
was destroyed, several of the captors were killed by Russian soldiers
and others were beaten to death by enraged and grief stricken parents.
At least two of the captors escaped. When it was all over, more than
400 children, teachers and parents were dead. I was sickened by the
news and staggered by the unbearable and unthinkable notion that
we now live in a world where our children are no longer safe in their
schools. I grieved for the children who were killed and the mothers
and fathers who had to bury them. In an attempt to express the horror
I felt, I created a series of serigraph monoprints. All I could think
about was what should those mothers have told their children on that
first day of school? What should we tell our children when we kiss
them goodbye each morning and send them out into a world sick with
war? |
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