Against Russia's policy in the Caucasus

The leaflet of the Antiwar Committee (Saint Petersburg):

"A picket of the Antiwar Committee against a colonial policy and aggressive war has been carried out for four years - every Sunday, from 14:00 till 16:00, at the intersection of Nevsky Avenue and Malaya Konyushennaya Street. The committee unites people of different views - human rights activists, communists, liberals, and anarchists - those who believe that aggressive wars have no justification and people have a right to decide their fates themselves.

The war in Chechnya is as aggressive as the US aggression in Iraq, with the only difference that there was no dictatorial regime in Chechnya at the moment of the Russian incursion and the national resistance has been enduring not for the first year. The losses are also incommensurable: dozens of times more people have died during the war in the Caucasus. No one knows the exact number. According to official data, over 4,000 people were killed in Iraq as a result of the US army actions. As government-backed Russian sources affirm, the losses of the Chechen war come to about 100,000 people, the wounded and mutilated are not included. A responsibility for this blood is on the regime of the Russian Federation.

It is easy to understand that what is happening in the Caucasus is not an "antiterrorist operation against illegal armed units". But it is not a war between the Russians and Chechens either. From the hand of the Russian Federation it is a colonial war organized by the Kremlin's terrorist authority. From the other hand it is the nation's resistance for national liberation.

There are no "higher" and "lower" nations. The people of the Northern Caucasus have the same right for self-determination as the people of Russia and Ukraine, Georgia and Baltic States, Serbia, Albania, and Iraq. Millions of people all over the world protested against the US attack on Iraq. If in Russia the adversaries' actions against the colonial Caucasian war should become the same as the protest of the Americans against Bush's policy, the war regime can not exist.

Death to the imperialism, liberty to the nations! Down with the colonial war!"