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 “People
live here”
On a brick wall in Grozny,
Chechnya, a faded, spraypainted message —
perhaps dating
back to the years of war in the 1990s — shouts a warning
to combatants: “People live here”. It’s
a plea from those within to be
spared from the battle raging
outside. Though the intense fighting of the
1990s has subsided,
the message is as pertinent as ever. Over the past
few years,
this region of the Russian Federation has been plagued by
violence between armed opposition groups and
local and federal
authorities. These sombre black-and-white
images, taken
by
ICRC’s
Marko Kokic, speak to the chronic
pain, poverty
and fear of people living
in the shadow of
conflict and violence.
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On a brick wall in Grozny, Chechnya, a faded, spraypainted
message — perhaps dating back to the years of
war in the 1990s — shouts a warning to combatants: “People
live here”.
Photo: ©ICRC |
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The Transcaucasian Highway is a mountain road that
crosses the Greater Caucasus, connecting North Ossetia
with South Ossetia and Russia with Georgia. The ICRC
often takes the highway during missions, bringing medical
care, providing information on missing family members
and helping people develop livelihoods. Photo: ©ICRC |
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This forty-nine-year-old
woman was a street cleaner before
she suffered a stroke and became bedridden two years
ago. Too young to collect a pension, she receives instant
meals, bread and sugar from the ICRC, which is working
to obtain a disability pension for her. A picture of
her only son — killed during the 1989-1992 South
Ossetian conflict — adorns the bare wall over
her bed at the Turbaza collective centre in Tskhinvali,
South Ossetia. The centre houses 43 displaced Ossetian
families. Photo: ©ICRC |
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This
6-year-old Ingushetian boy holds a photo of his father,
a plumber and an alleged member
of the armed opposition who was killed by security
forces in 2010. Mahomet and his brother are now being
raised by their 70-year-old great aunt, the mother
having left the family. The family received a cow,
clothes and financial assistance from the ICRC. Photo: ©ICRC |
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In Shuani, a village in Chechnya in
the Russian Federation, this 55-year-old woman tends
to cucumbers that she raises in a greenhouse provided
through an ICRC microeconomic initiative. The work,
she says, helps her forget, for just a little while,
about her two sons, who were abducted in the middle
of the night in 2003 and have been missing ever since.
Photo: ©ICRC |
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An ICRC field cooperation officer listens
to an 83-year-old beneficiary of
a Russian Red Cross home nursing programme in Grozny,
the capital of Chechnya in the Russian Federation.
Her home was destroyed during the Chechen
war, and her neighbours hid her in the basement to
spare her from being killed for being a Russian. Photo: ©ICRC |
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The cranes and newly built skyscrapers that adorn
the skyline of Grozny are a sign that afteryears of warfare,
the capital hopes to rebuild and reinvent itself. The
city’s main mosque, constructed by Turkish architects
and builders in 2008, is said to be the largest in Europe
and can hold up to 10,000 people. Photo: ©ICRC |
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Lack of access to regular health care is a perennial
hardship in the region. Many elderly people, such as
the 80-year-old South Ossetian woman pictured here, fend
for themselves with little outside assistance. Fortunately,
the local health post, where the elderly woman goes to
have her blood pressure tested and receive medication,
was recently renovated. The ICRC also helps her with
food parcels. Photo: ©ICRC |
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In Tskhinvali, in South Ossetia, the Turbaza collective
center houses 43 families — all Ossetian displaced
during the first South Ossetian conflict (1989-1992). Photo: ©ICRC |
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