“Feridun, you will answer with your life”: the tragedy at Crocus turned into a surge in ethnic conflicts in schools

Everyone is discussing the tragedy of March 22, and few people now think of protecting children from the details – on the contrary, parents warn them, urging them to avoid crowded places and suspicious people. And this is already bearing fruit – but, alas, not at all what moms and dads wanted.

The names of those detained on suspicion of committing mass murder are known – and now many of our fellow citizens have begun to check their nationality with taxi drivers and couriers before using their service, “so as not to run into a terrorist.” Migrant workers from Central Asia across the country are being intensively checked for their documents, as are Russian landlords who rent them out to foreign citizens.

And curious children interpret everything in their own way. This is what a Muscovite says, whose son, daughter-in-law and grandson live in New Moscow, where there are many Central Asian families, some of whom have long been citizens of Russia.

“All our children were born in Moscow, but we gave them national names, in honor of their grandparents,” says Aina, who was born in Soviet Uzbekistan more than 60 years ago, and has been constantly living in Moscow for the last 40 years. “My father was a Tajik, in “There are entire Tajik cities in Uzbekistan. My grandson’s name is Feridun, he is in the 7th grade. Yesterday he came beaten and said that he would not go to school again.”

It turned out that the guy was beaten by his classmates because he had the same name as one of the terrorism suspects. The student’s grandmother and parents, like him, do not want to aggravate the situation by directly pointing out those responsible for the massacre, but they urge other parents to carry out explanatory work with their children.

“Children hear not only the TV, but also you and me, and discuss it on their social networks,” explains Aina. “After this incident, my son allowed himself to secretly climb onto his son’s page on the social network, and there it’s just terrible: go home, you idiot filthy, otherwise you will answer with your life for the death of ours, and everything like that.”

The most cursory survey of parents of Moscow schoolchildren shows that not everyone understands the scale of the possible consequences of their behavior.

“We gave the school an ultimatum: either us or them!” fumes 32-year-old Victoria, the mother of a third-grader from New Moscow. “Out of 25 people in our class, there are 10 of these “feriduns.” We demanded that they be removed from our school or at least “We would like to divide classes into Russian and Churkian for the safety of our children.”

– Do you seriously think that third graders with Asian names could be dangerous for your daughter?

– Well, they themselves are small, maybe not, but we don’t know how they are raised there! And parents come to meetings – well, just like they show on TV now, no blah, no blah. “Don’t know anything, my or yours don’t understand, I just came from Tazhikiston yesterday.” What is the demand from them, they will do something wrong and then look for them in Tazhikiston.

“This is the case when parents, stunned by grief and frightened, can prolong the tragedy through the hands of their children,” warns teenage psychologist Nigar Guliyeva. – It’s not for nothing that the president of Tajikistan and all Islamic religious figures after the tragedy first of all told their parishioners: explain to the children. After all, fear gives rise to hatred, and quantitative hatred turns into qualitative. That is, if you offend innocent children with Tajik names for a long time, and these, by the way, are original Arabic names that are given to Muslims all over the world, these children will one day get tired of fearing and hating and will begin to return evil for evil. Parents are obliged to talk sensibly with children attending child care institutions from kindergartens to schools and universities. If it is possible to unite against an external enemy, then discrimination by nationality and name within the country is something that will corrode it from within much faster than external attacks. But the majority of Russians, and even more so children, do not even distinguish a Tajik from an Uzbek, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and so on, imagine if they start to offend everyone! And these are peoples, although they are patient, but if you go too far and push it, then you won’t be able to stop it.

Meanwhile, Central Asian diasporas in Russian cities report that manifestations of discrimination based on oriental appearance and name are only intensifying: not only citizens of Tajikistan, but also people from other Central Asian countries are insulted on the streets and in public places, they are refused service in shops and in other service sector, in some cases they send threats on social networks and even write on the walls of the entrance. Muftis and imams (Islamic clerics) on the ground urge parishioners not to take insults personally and to understand the Russians by sharing their pain.