ACPC Remembers the 1944 Chechen Deportation

On the 60th anniversary of the Chechen deportation of February 23, 1944, ACPC remembers this tragic event.

"More people died by deliberate design in the 20th Century than in all previous centuries combined," said ACPC Chairman Zbigniew Brzezinski, "And the principal victims, if we were to rank them, were the Jews, the Gypsies and the Chechens."

An estimated 70,000 people died from cold, starvation, and disease during the deportation. In total, some 200,000 Chechens died in exile, roughly one half of the population.

"If one considers the fact that in 1944, the Chechen people were chosen to be eliminated as a nation - uprooted from their soil and deported in the midst of a cold winter to an alien territory - this closely approximates what happened to the Jews and the Gypsies," continued Brzezinski.

After withdrawing from Chechnya in 1997, Russian Federation forces reentered the tiny republic in 1999, engaging in what has become a gruesome war of attrition. Total deaths, including those from the 1994-1997 war, are believed to be more than 100,000.

"Since the 1990s, how many more have died? - Not by accident, not by earthquakes, not by climatically induced starvation, but at the hands of others, deliberately. And how did they die? They died like the Gypsies, like the Jews: amidst global silence, in solitude. It is our responsibility to ensure that the international community responds generously to the need to salvage the Chechen people as a people, to preserve their inner fabric of identity, so that what Stalin started in 1944 doesn't become reality as a consequence of what is happening today," Brzezinski concluded.

Founded in 1999, the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC) is a bipartisan coalition of distinguished Americans dedicated to promoting a peaceful end to the war in Chechnya.