Russian Newsweek: "Parole Shocks Chechnya"
ARTYOM VERNIDUB, PAVEL SEDANOV and MAX NOVIKOV (photos)
By Artyom Sedanov
Little nieces of Elza Kungayeva, the Chechen girl killed by Colonel Yury Budanov nine years ago, were frightened out of their wits when their grandmother told them last week that Newsweek correspondents would visit them. "Russians are coming," she said. The girls thought more relatives would be arrested. The big Kungayev family complained to us that the children hid under beds at the noise of army vehicles, whose roar they had heard as babies. The elder family members write appeals to Chechen leaders to put Budanov back behind bars.
160th Tank Regiment Commander Budanov brutally murdered Elza Kungayeva, an 18-year old girl from the village of Tangi-Chu, in March 2000, and was sentenced to ten years in prison. His case is a painful issue for all Chechens, from the Kungayevs to President Ramzan Kadyrov. They regard him as evil incarnate. Kadyrov made a public warning that Chechens would develop prejudice against Russian authorities unless they revoked his parole. Nevertheless, Budanov was released last Thursday.
Merrymaking against Dark Remembrances
New Year turned Grozny into a fairytale city, aglow with lights. The most picturesque buildings are floodlit-Europe's largest mosque, which opened next to Ahmad Kadyrov Square in October, the Christian church opposite it across the Sunzha River, and newly repaired apartment houses and office buildings in the city centre. Signs are piled on the pavement near the brand-new walls-there has been no time to hang them yet. "Look, marble all over the houses! It's Turkish. We've had Turkish builders here," Ahmad, our volunteer guide, says proudly as he drives his car along a boulevard renamed Vladimir Putin Prospekt on the day the Prime Minister came for the opening of the mosque.
The boulevard is lined with retro streetlights, the kind all Russian pedestrian streets have. Here, each has the Muslim half-moon symbol on top. Lamps garland every tree and sapling. The city's largest New Year's tree towers in the square next to the mosque. Townspeople promenaded around it all through the night during the winter holidays. New Year's Eve was celebrated Russian-style, with street photographers, merry-go-rounds, Snow Maiden and Father Frost, a bearded six-and-a-half foot talking Chechen. There are two ways in which the peaceful scene differs from similar festive sites anywhere else-machine-gunners cordoning the square and a neon sign on a roof, reading "Ramzan, thank you for the holiday!" Cranes all around are also decorated. Huge signs say: "Please excuse us the intrusive construction work."
A large concert hall has opened recently on Putin Prospekt. President Kadyrov decorated Chechen police there last Tuesday, the day his press service first released a statement concerning the December decision on Budanov's parole. "The court has buried its own prestige," the statement said.
"The man deserves a life sentence," Ahmad growled, interrupting his own praise of the concert hall.
