Friday, October 06, 2006
Theatres to offer terror insurance
Guardian Unlimited Arts: "One-off policies against 'unfortunate occurrences' will be available for between five and 200 roubles (£1-£4) when booking seats. It is a delayed response to the Moscow hostage crisis in 2002, when 129 audience members were killed after Chechen militants seized a theatre."
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2 comments:
I know very little about the reasons for the military seiges on theatres in Russia, however one can only assume that if an arts organization is hassled by force, the work that they are producing is clearly expressing their views against something. And thats good to hear, even if JimBob TheatreGoer has to buy life insurance for the performance. What is most interesting is that people are GOING to the theatre while their life may be in jeopardy. Thats some powerful art right there.
Just a reminder… The theater audience was kidnapped by the independentist terrorist group from Chechenia (sorry if this is not the correct way to name it in English). The Chechenian people have fought during decades for their independency. Something the Russian government is not willing to accept because of, among many other things, the petrol that happens to be under Chechenian soil.
The Chechenians seiged the theatre with hundreds of people (if I recall well, I think they were around 500 people). They didn´t seem very willing to negotiate, so the Russian armed forces entered the theatre using a gas that happened to be toxic. So… at the end, hundreds of people died because of both sides´ shots and also because of the toxic gas.
After this masacre, a couple years ago the Chechenians kilt hundreds of children in a Russian school…
Can there be something more horrible that terrotist attacks against children?
Laura Prieto Garcia
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