London, United Kingdom
World Chechnya Day Memorial Service
Date: Thursday 23 February 2006
Time: 12 - 1.15pm
Venue: Yalta Memorial, Cromwell Gardens, South Kensington, London SW7 2SL
Nearest tube station: South Kensington (District, Circle and Piccadilly Lines)
As part of World Chechnya Day, you are invited to attend the Save Chechnya Campaign remembrance service at the Yalta Memorial in South Kensington from 12-1pm on Thursday 23rd February to commemorate the Deportations and Genocide of the Chechen people in 1944.
Sixty two years ago, on 23 February 1944, Stalin ordered the forcible deportation of the Chechen, Ingush and other nations of the North Caucasus to Central Asia. The people who were were transported with little or no provision in cattle trucks and more than half died in transit or in massacres committed by Soviet troops. Those who survived the journey were left facing starvation and disease in the harsh winters of Siberia and Central Asia. In 2004 the European Parliament passed a motion formally recognising this tragedy as a genocide.
Speaking at the Memorial will be:
* Professor George Hewitt - Professor of Caucasian Languages (SOAS), Trustee of MARCCH
* Mrs. Saida Sherif - Chairperson, Save Chechnya Campaign
* Vanessa Redgrave - Actress and Human Rights Activist
* Ahmed Zakayev - (Late) President Maskhadov's Representative in Europe
* Rabbi Jacqueline Tabick - North West Surrey Synagogue
* Revd Father Frank Gelli - Former Curate of St Mary Abbots, Kensington Parish Church. Founder of Arkadash Network for Religious Dialogue.
* Abdur Raheem Green - London Central Mosque
Schedule:
12.00 Gather at the Yalta Memorial
12.15 Opening: Mrs. Saida Sherif
12.20 Vanessa Redgrave
12.25 Professor George Hewitt
12.30 Ahmed Zakayev
12.35 Rabbi Jacqueline Tabick
12.40 Revd Father Frank Gelli
12.45 Abdur Raheem Green
12.50 Recital of Memories
13.00 Prayer
13.09 Minutes Silence
13.10 Balloon Release
Directions:
The Yalta Memorial is situated in South Kensington, London SW7 in public gardens between Cromwell Gardens and Thurloe Place:
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=526983&y=179003&z=1&sv=526750,179250&st=4&ar=Y&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf
*******************************************************************************
Stanley Greene's Award-Winning Exhibition
@ the London Muslim Centre, 46-92 Whitechapel Road, London E1 1JQ
Date: Thursday 23 Feb
Time: 3 - 9pm
Nearest tube station: Whitechapel or Aldgate East
Over the last ten years, Stanley Greene made some twenty trips to Chechnya as a photographer and he has come back as a witness to the death and destruction that took place, is taking place, and will go on unless the international community refuses to be deceived any longer. With Open Wound: Chechnya 1994 to 2003, an exhibition of images taken from his recently published book of the same title (Trolley), Stanley Greene does not ask us to pity the people of Chechnya. What he demands is our outrage. Stanley Greene is the recipient of the 2004 W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography and Open Wound: Chechnya 1994 to 2003 is the first prize award-winner for the 2004 World Press Photo for Daily Life stories.
Directions:
The London Muslim Centre is on Whitechapel Road, half way between Whitechapel and Aldgate East tube stations:
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=534317&y=181612&z=0&sv=E1+1JQ&st=2&pc=E1+1JQ&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf
*******************************************************************************
Film & Speaker Event
Date: Thursday 23 Feb
Time: 4 - 6pm
Venue: Khalili Lecture Theatre, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
4pm Talk by Prof George Hewitt
5pm Film Showing of 'Chechnya: The Dirty War'
Reporters Mariusz Pilis and Marcin Mamon travel to neighbouring Chechnya, one of the most dangerous places on earth, to report on what life is like after more than a decade of Chechen terrorism and Russian repression. Filmed over the course of nine months, the film reveals that what started as a separatist movement in 1994 has now become synonymous with terrorism.
