23rd February is World Chechnya Day.
A day few are aware of and yet none should forget. Read more here
World Chechnya Day is intended to commemorate the dignity and resiliance of a
people who, against all odds, refused to be erased from existence.
On 23 February 1944, Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Chechen and
Ingush population to Central Asia. More than half of the 500,000 people who
were to be forcibly transported died in transit or in massacres committed by
Soviet troops. Those who survived the journey were left facing starvation and
disease in the harsh winters of Siberia and Central Asia.
Within days an entire people had been erased from the land of their ancestors.
Overnight Chechnya and Ingushetia were emptied of their native inhabitants, and
every reference to Chechnya was removed from official maps, records and
encyclopaedias.
In 2004, sixty years after the event, the European Parliament passed a motion
that recognised this catastrophe as Genocide.
23rd February is World Chechnya Day. It is a day that few are aware of and yet
none should forget.
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