3rd Anniversary of Beslan Tragedy

September marks the third anniversary of the Beslan school tragedy in Russia where, unbelievably, 333 innocent people, half of them schoolchildren, were sacrificed for someone's political agenda.



A letter to President Putin from the Beslan Mothers Committee reads, in part:

"The most important truth is that our children were sacrificed for someone's bureaucratic interests. We know this truth. The whole Russian people should know this too.

Beslan is not just a great tragedy for Russia, it is also a shameful episode for the Russian authorities.

It is your moral duty, as the president of Russia, to come to Beslan in your last year in office, to go to the children's cemetery, to see at first hand the scale of the tragedy and to tell the truth to all of Russia."

source: Reuters

Let's not forget the Russian journalists whose efforts at reporting the truth were stymied in the most awful ways. Read The Murder of Anna Politkovskaya.

This weekend, say a prayer for the innocent lives lost at Beslan and commit yoursleves to defending every journalist who sets out to report the truth at great risk to themselves.