To be submitted to local newspapers' Letter to the Editor sections:

Sorrowful reports in the world press depict the tears and wails of mourning echoing through the streets of Beslan, Russia in the wake of the school hostage-taking that left more than 350 people dead — nearly half of them children. Russian President Vladimir Putin defiantly says on his country’s television sets, "what happened was a terrorist act that was inhuman and unprecedented in its cruelty.” As sad as this all may be, seemingly so conveniently forgotten to the world is the unprecedented terrorism, inhumanity and cruelty inflicted by Russia (in those days called “Soviet Russia”) on Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania for over half-a-century.

Forgotten is the time when the Russians grabbed tens of thousands of Balts – including women and children – and senselessly deported them to Siberian gulags and death camps. Forgotten and now silent are the Russian trucks which busily snatched and dragged men, women, and children off the street of the Baltic capitols, kicking, crying to certain torture and death.

Forgotten are the thousands and thousands of Balts who had to flee for their lives away from their homelands to avoid the systematic, brutal, oppressive Soviet occupation which lasted for 56 years. Forgotten are the arrests and executions of innocent citizens, massive deportations to Siberia, and a systematic effort to make the Latvians, Estonians, and Lithuanians a minority in their own country by flooding it with Russian speaking immigrants from Soviet controlled republics.

So as you try to make sense of what has happened on your tear-stained cheeks of your face, Beslan, please, please, don’t cry for me.


Ivars Bezdechi
San Diego, CA