Ethnic muslims living around Sochi insist their aims are peaceful
(17 Feb 2014) While Olympic spectators watch the Winter Games in gleaming arenas, boys in nearby Bolshoi Kichmai herd their goats by tying them to rickety bicycles, riding through a rocky valley where their ancestors fiercely resisted the Russian Czarist conquest.
Circassians, a Muslim ethnic group, say the Russian Army committed genocide against their ancestors and exiled them from Sochi from 1860 to 1864.
Russia has denied the charges of genocide.
Members of the Circassian diaspora from New Jersey to Turkey and Israel have protested, arguing that Sochi Olympic skiing and other events are being staged on the blood of their forebears.
Russia's most prominent militant, Doku Umarov, has also adopted the Circassians' cause.
In a warning last year, the Chechen rebel leader urged Muslim extremists to target the Games.
Activists say Umarov's threat has provided Russian security services with a pretext to increase document checks and pressure on women wearing headscarves and men with long beards across the Caucasus.
However Circassians living in villages sprinkled through the Sochi region insist they are peaceful and have nothing to do with Umarov's threat.
Aisa Achmizov, who runs the small folk art museum in Bolshoi Kichmai, hopes the Olympics will bring in more visitors.
"This is a huge breakthrough, and not only for me, but for our children," he said.
Circassians in Bolshoi Kichmai, struggle to get by on tourism in a town with few amenities, just a few dozen kilometres from Olympic events but a world away from their glory.
Firewood is the primary fuel for many families.
But water is running short, after a company building railroads for the Olympic project hauled away huge amounts of gravel from the Shakhe river, disrupting its flow through the town.
Achmizov said businessmen and authorities took too much gravel, more than was necessary.
"We were against it. We closed the road for them here, but still they look for the way to get here," he said.
Residents filed a lawsuit against the company, but are still waiting for results.
The No Sochi campaign (www.nosochi2014.com), launched by exiled Circassians, wants Russian authorities to recognise what happened in 1864 as a genocide, to allow Circassians from around the world to move back to ancestral lands, and an end to de facto quotas for Circassians in local police, government and other positions.
Amid the pressure, regional authorities belatedly acknowledged that the Olympic sites are on what was once Circassian land, and Olympic organisers hastily erected a Circassian House in Olympic Park.
President Vladimir Putin however, has dismissed Circassian protests abroad as a tool in a campaign against Russia's global influence.
Bolshoi Kichmai's residents meanwhile, are leading their lives as if the Olympics weren't happening just a few valleys away.
Beekeeper Khamed Komzh shrugs when asked about how history has treated his people.
"Well, what can we do? It is done. God will be their judge."
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metad....ata/youtube/33f6edcc
