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Sochi's Forgotten People

Syuzanna Petrosyan |
February 12, 2014 | 3:22 p.m. PST

Executive Producer

No Sochi 2014 Campaign
No Sochi 2014 Campaign
The chosen site of the 2014 Winter Olympics has stirred powerful memories and emotions from people who were exiled from the place more than a century ago.

For most people, Sochi is home to Russia's finest ski resorts, surrounded by exceptional natural beauty. For the exiled Circassians, however, the same place represents a history of atrocities and genocide. The 2014 Olympic Games will mark the 150th anniversary of the Circassian defeat at the hands of Russia, which resulted in their expulsion from their homeland. And the diaspora is intent on having its message heard.

In the late 1800s, about a million Circassians, Sochi's original inhabitants, were driven out and 1.5 million killed in a series of military campaigns by tsarist forces. Within a generation, only 10 percent of the Circassian population remained on the land.

The olympic games represent peace and dialogue between civilizations, and Circassians did not want the event to be held on the site of a genocide.

Russia has not only refused to recognize the Circassian Genocide but when President Vladimir Putin delivered his bid for the games in a speech to the International Olympic Committee in 2007, he said that the Sochi area used to be inhabited by ancient Greeks and did not mention the Circassians.

Nonetheless, the Games at Sochi have given the Circassians an opportunity to voice the genocide with the international community, and raise awareness about their deportations and exile.

While Russia has increased publicity for the Winter Olympics, exiled Circassians are organizing rival campaigns to expose the devastating story of their ancestors. Circassian activists launched the "No Sochi 2014 Campaign" in 2007 when Russia was awarded the games. They demanded that the games should be cancelled and Russian should recognize the Circassian Genocide.  At the very least, most Circassians want elements of their culture to be included in the Olympics and support the games on that condition.

"The grandchildren of the massacred and exiled native people of the 2014 winter Olympics city Sochi and the Krasnodar Kray still live in the countries they were exiled to but their faces turned towards to their homeland," reads an article on the campaign site. "The idea of holding Olympics in Sochi on the soil of genocide where the hundreds of thousands of Circassian tears, moans and curse are bleeding, can not be acceptable."

Not many doubted that the Olympic Games will go on. The Circassian issue, however, raises questions about the role indigenous peoples play in the 21st century and how their story can help ensure that the destruction of an entire people never happens again.

Reach Executive Producer Syuzanna Petrosyan hereFollow her on Twitter.



 

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