The city refuses to preserve the name of a terror victim

Karaganda city authorities decide that a plaque in memory of a 13-year-old victim of ‘Nord-Ost’ is unneeded. The bureaucrats figure that it would be in excess.

Tomorrow it will be six years since terrorists seized the Moscow theatrical center at Dubrovka. On Sunday, it has been six years since the hostage rescue operation, when, on October 26^th, 2002, Karaganda girl Sasha Letyago died.

Last year Svetlana Gubareva, the mother of the schoolgirl, applied to the city monument commission for a memorial plaque. “During those tragic days there were a lot of words said about remembering the victims forever, about how this tragedy should never be forgotten,” she wrote the bureaucrats. “I believe that a memorial plaque at Public School #38, which Sasha attended from first grade until the moment of her death, would be one of the steps in turning words into deeds.”

The answer she received from the city administration is a shining example a purely bureaucratic approach to a human problem. In Svetlana Gubareva’s case, the absolute indifference of the bureaucratic machinery is absurd. In order to preserve the child’s memory, the city asked her mother to present a multitude of documents. Among these they required a copy of the girl’s employment papers, copies of special services to the republic, and her autobiography in Russian and Kazakh. The woman had to explain to the bureaucrats that, since her daughter was dead, that she would be unable to present her autobiography. As far as special service to the Fatherland, the 13-year-old had none, nor did she possess employment papers.

In the end the bureaucrats examined Gubareva’s appeal, even without these documents. And refused. But Svetlana Gubareva did not settle for this. She went to see one of the members of the commission, Deputy Alexander Parshenko. After talking with the former hostage, the people’s representative changed his opinion, and promised to assist.

And now at the beginning of October Gubareva’s petition was heard a second time by the city administration, and again refused.

“All 11 members of the commission were categorically against it,” said Deputy Parshenko. “But I met Svetlana Gubareva, and her daughter is the whole point of her existence. I understand this. I really tried to help her. I tried to talk them into it, but they told me that the woman was not at the show on official city business, she hadn’t been sent there. I tried to convince them, but they said that her trip to Moscow was her personal idea, she wanted to meet her fiancée, and so the city wasn’t at fault for what happened. But the greatest argument was that in Moscow there already is a monument that lists the girl’s name among the other dead hostages. The commission members thought that this was enough…

After such arguments I have a bad feeling towards the society to which I belong. For 13-year-old Sasha, who never was able to be of use to the government, that is, to you and me, one line on a monument in far-off Moscow is enough. What regulation states that we here in peaceful Karaganda cannot recall our little fellow citizen who died in one of the worst tragedies at the beginning of the century? After all, we did not send the terrorists to Dubrovka to take the child hostage. We had nothing to do with it. We work here, and our children go to school here. We don’t want excess memorial plaques.

“We think that it’s a good idea to set up a memorial plaque on the building where Sasha went to school!” wrote Denis and Irina of Karaganda at www.nord-ost.com. “The city is more than neutral in the ‘Nord-Ost’ story! Even if only in such a manner, the city preserves the memory of the girl who will forever remain 13! I hope that the local authorities will be a little more reasonable, after all every rule has an exception (even those of monument commissions)! Therefore we must bring this to their attention. Lately there have been several pseudo-heroes found to have been 'worthy' enough to have our city streets bear their names, and now we know a little too much about these 'heroes'. So, why is this little person, who found herself an unwilling hostage to secret government games, not a little bit worthy of a monument?”

By Anastasiya Mashnina, Noviy Vestnik (New Herald), Karaganda, Kazakhstan http://www.nv.kz/2008/10/22/10057/

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