All posts tagged: terrorism

Beslan: a photo-essay

Published by podmeister

This week, instead of a podcast, we have a photo-essay by Timothy Phillips, author of Beslan: the Tragedy of School No.1, which was the subject of our podcast on 15 November. Tim took these pictures in the spring following the terrorist attack. Here is how he describes the moment when, after a long overland journey from Moscow, he first confronts School No.1: I stood still and looked straight ahead. There is was, set in bright grass, dandelion-speckled and overlooked by trees: a building deeply at odds with its surroundings. Swallows and thrushes darted about. I could hear children playing in nearby streets and gardens. The building spoke for itself. It bore witness to the wrongs done inside its walls. The mangled roof appeared jagged against the blue sky. Crimson curtains billowed out of empty window frames. Bullet holes and bloodstains drew my eye away from the flowers. Torn and sodden textbooks lay where they had fallen months before. Graffiti promised those who had not survived that they would be remembered and avenged. You can see …

4. ‘Real stories of ordinary people…’ – Remembering Beslan

Published by podmeister

On the morning of 1 September 2004, children and teachers all over Russia were getting ready for the first day of the new school year. So begins Timothy Phillips’ account of the terrible siege of School No. 1 in Beslan, North Ossetia. Of course, we know now that that day three years ago which began as a celebration was to turn into the worst terrorist atrocity in Russian history. But although we remember the harrowing scenes filmed by the terrorists in the school gymnasium on the camcorders which proud parents had brought to the parade, and the disastrous, chaotic end to the siege in which so many people died, many of us may have a sketchier understanding of what lay behind those events: Who were the hijackers? What motivated them? And what why did they come to Beslan? These are among the questions that Timothy Phillips tries to answer in his book on the siege. He travelled to Beslan a few months after the siege and spoke to those involved. In the interview, I ask …