I sat watching BBC News 24 as the storming of the school in Baslan played out on my TV screen. I watched as children were shot at as they tried to escape and I watched as parents and relatives surveyed the damaged gymnasium and hurriedly put together lists of the dead and injured. I saw the turmoil, the anger, the grief.
What is it that turns human against human? What kind of person can dehumanise children so totally that they can be used as tools and a means to an end? What does a person have to have suffered to see the killing of children as a legitimate target to promote their cause?
The hostage-takers are wrong to have used these innocent children, to have destroyed lives and families and communities but what about the communities that they themselves come from. If we call them monsters or similar we dehumanise them and fail to see the suffering that they have endured in their lives. We will fail to see the families and communities of other innocents torn apart by war and conflict.
The Chechens want justice and freedom from the Russian government and have been denied both. The hostage-takers were fighting for a cause they believe in and they were wrong to kill in this way but we dehumanise them at our peril. Understanding doesn't mean letting them off nor does it in any way minimise the horror and enormity of what they did. It does allow us to see the humanity of the situation and realise that there but for the grace of God go you or I.
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