Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 11/25/08 Section: Opinion

A United States Congressional resolution declared Captive Nations Week in 1959, signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Since then, every third week of July has been dedicated to raising the public's awareness of oppressed nations under the control of communists and other non-democratic governments.

In an article titled "Who's Captive Now?" the Economist magazine studied a list of nations under United States supervision today.

The list stretches with countries such as, "Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Estonia, White Ruthenia, Rumania, East Germany, Bulgaria, mainland China, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, North Korea, Albania, Idel-Ural, Tibet, Cossackia, Turkestan, North Vietnam and others."

Indeed, many of the nations mentioned above have earned their bit of international media attention, educating the world of the national conflicts and of the oppression inflicted upon the citizen's lives.

Political analysts have offered their professional advice while the media traced biased and oppressive authorities' moves.

The article continues to note that "other (nations) whose history gives them every cause for complaint, such as the Circassians, don't appear at all."

The writer then confronts his readers with a question:

"Is the aim of the resolution ethnic self-determination, or the destruction of communist rule? As it stands, the two are conflated."

As a member of the Circassian diaspora, the persistent efforts of the Russian government to eradicate the history of our people, people of the North Caucasus, have produced some fruit.

It is seen in the weak interest of the international community in our cause. It is seen in the disregard of the International Olympic Committee to our opposition to the 2014 Winter Olympiad, which will be hosted by Sochi, Russia. And it is seen in the treatment of our journalists who fight the Russian oppression and propaganda to finally fall prey to Russian aggression.

The thrust of hostility between our nation and the Russians has not thawed yet.

Circassian journalist Fatima Tlisova faced a challenge by the Russian government in her attempt to expose truths of the Russian official policy undermining human rights of the North Caucasus region.

Her career as a journalist started at the liberal biweekly Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper publishing the work of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered while researching human rights in Chechnya.

Facing the same threat, it was reported that Tlisova was assaulted and poisoned several times since 2002. She has been granted political asylum in the United States and is now a Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights, for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

But perhaps this historical background is the reason behind the transparency of the Circassian nation in contemporary media. Perhaps the Russians' propaganda has won this time around in concealing a truth so diligently that even the most powerful country in the world does not even notice it.

For 150 years, we, members of the Circassian diaspora, have struggled to assimilate and preserve our culture. Today, with the assistance of an informed media, an informed international community and with the help of the world, it is time for us to appear again with a stronger, unified identity.

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