By Elena Petrovskaya, http://www.lenizdat.ru, February 26th, 2007.

Families who lost loved ones at the now sadly famous ‘Nord-Ost’ have decided to remind Russians about acts of terror and their aftermaths.  Within the framework of the ‘Citizens against Terror’ project, they are traveling from city to city showing documentary films and handing out books with collections of the most frank and terrible documentary evidence on the ‘Nord-Ost’ and Beslan tragedies.  For two days they were in Saint Petersburg, or more accurately, they were at the Memorial Society’s building here, and were seen by the Lenizdat.ru correspondent.

The public organization, which calls itself ‘Nord-Ost’, is a union of about two thousand terror victims and those who lost family members in various acts of terror.  They had several films on hand, one of which was their own production.  It was presented as a collage of numerous broadcasts from Russian television stations, as well as several foreign programs.  It successively chronicles several tragedies on the screen: the blast of the apartment building on Guryanov Street, ‘Nord-Ost’, the Tu-134 destruction near Tula, then, finally, Beslan.

The newscasters’ reports and the recollections of the people who survived these events are combined with the terrible footage, which reflects the universal sorrow.

Nikolai Karpov made this homemade film.  He is the son of Tatiana Karpova, who is co-chairman of the ‘Nord-Ost’ organization.  His brother Alexander was left to lay helpless in the theater for 7 hours after the assault, and died without ever receiving medical assistance.

The ‘Citizens against Terror’ project organizers also have professional documentaries.  One of these is ‘Terror in Moscow’ by the English director Dan Reed and producer Mark Franketti.  It had once been scheduled to be shown at the Moscow cinema festival, but was deleted from the program.

Another professional work is ‘Mistrust’ by Andrey Nekrasov, which mainly discusses the Moscow apartment bombings on Guryanov Street and the Kashirsk Highway, and fully reflects the position of these people.

As Tatiana Karpova put it, we will never learn the whole truth about the Dubrovka tragedy because the group that investigated it was disbanded in December of 2003.  Now it has become known that a huge number of errors were made during the rescue operation – from the lack of medical assistance to the use of the gas, which has left many who survived permanently handicapped.  Dmitry Milovidov, who lost his daughter in the ‘Nord-Ost’ auditorium, stated there is no official status in Russia for victims of acts of terror.  Also, he stated that just before the beginning of 2007 the prosecutor’s office confiscated a number of undisclosed materials that he had discovered, and Moscow city council member Vladimir Platonov had declared that ‘Nord-Ost’ was no act of terror because “the building wasn’t destroyed”.

It is for this reason that members of the ‘Nord-Ost’ organization are certain that they must use the mass media to discuss the matter.  “Even if it’s only with sound bites and inaccuracies, we still ask this,” said Tatiana Karpova, explaining her position.  “But if the journalists wrote in more detail about what went on, then what happened in Beslan might not have happened.”

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