``If you want to become a complete Islamic radical and are ready to undergo circumcision, then I invite you to Moscow. We are a multidenominational country. We have specialists in this question as well. I will recommend that he carry out the operation in such a way that after it nothing else will grow.’’
– Putin, advising a strange medical procedure.
What the hell is the deal here? Is Putin seriously considering castrating all Moslems he thinks are radical? Does he think that inviting the radicals to get their balls chopped off will help the situation in the least?
Is yet another madman in control of Russia?
Eurasia, of all places, should know the horrors of forced sterilization. Between China and Germany, I think the megacontinent’s had about enough. But now Russia, headed by a latter-day Ivan the Terrible, wants to revive casual mutilation.
Of course, the press wasn’t well-informed. The translators made `errors’ and the papers went with those.
``If you want to become an Islamic radical and if you’d like to get your circumcision, please come to Moscow. We are a multiconfessional, multiethnic nation. Please come. You are welcome and everything and everyone is tolerated in Moscow.’’
– The mistranslated version.
Circumcision is a far cry from castration, and the translators knew it. They conspired to hide their leader’s madness by presenting a sanitized front. Who knows how often this has happened in the past?
Judging from past actions and his history, Putin is not going to negotiate with factions or pay much heed to the rules of war. He is going to destroy as much of Chechnya as he can, and he is going to do it under the pretext of killing Moslem radicals. Proper translation is essential if the world is going to avoid a repeat of Stalin’s purges.
It’s also a kind of Stalinist approach. Putin isn’t going to negotiate any more than Stalin would have. Putin wants to crush Chechnya and all other opposition and he is not going to listen to anyone who disagrees.
After all, critics must be terrorists and should be castrated. :smack:
Putin’s very bright, but he needs a PR course. And a change of policies, obviously. He doesn’t scare me half as much as Yeltzin did, but MAN, they should have let Gorbatchev finish what he started. The country would be in a far better shape now, and Chechenya would probably not even be occupied anymore.
Oh, to the OP: since when is having ones balls chopped off “casual mutulation”? Did I miss a memo?
I think Putin was just angry at the Muslim fundies for the theatre attack last month. We wern’t exactly flowers and sunshine about them after 9/11 either. I think you’re making wayyyyy too much of this. After all, we generally said we were going to kill all the fundies, which is, IMO, far worse than being invited to castration.
Putin is normally very politically savvy; he certainly knows what needs to be said for world consumption. If he’s calm and rational enough to think about it, anyway. I think he’s finally blown his stack in re: the Chechens.
I’d been trying to withold judgement about him, but as if the past years of total destruction and human rights violations hadn’t already been enough, now he’s just proven that he doesn’t give a damn what the rest of the world thinks of what he is doing in Chechnya. It’s very sad, because I love Russia and I love the Russians (and the North Caucasians for that matter), and they are generally much misunderstood.
I’m losing hope for the place at a faster and faster rate, though, at least in terms of observing anything approaching international human rights norms. Kenneth Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch, spoke here in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, and I got to ask him what he thought the U.S. could do to influence the Chechen situation. He basically implied that we wouldn’t do a damn thing, because we need Russia’s vote on the Security Council on “antiterrorism” issues.
So what’s a poor, frustrated human rights activist to do? Perhaps good ol’ Vlad is willing to serve as a test case for Russian surgical skill, if he has anything left to operate on?
Putin’s frustrated. The war in Chechnya’s been going on for 8 years, without any real end in sight, there’s just been that major terrorist incident, and he’s tired of all the European criticism. After all, from his standpoint, he’s the good guy. He’s trying to keep his country together and stop the threat of Islam and Muslim extremism.
So, the French reporter starts asking him what he sees as criticizing questions about Chechnya, and he snaps and answers, “Look, these Chechens are a danger to all of Christendom. If you like the Chechens so much, why don’t you go all the way and become an Islamic radical yourself? Come to Moscow. We have good doctors who can circumcize you. Maybe we’ll be lucky and they’ll cut off everything.”
So, he wasn’t making a policy decision. He just got pissed and told a hostle reporter he’d cut off the reporter’s balls.
Well, I poked around, and can’t find the full text of Putin’s remarks, but the Russian press is referring to obrezanie (circumcision), not castration.
Happily, I also discovered a more in-depth Russia-based news source with an English version, which might interest some of you. Beware, though: the Russian version isn’t word-for-word the same, and the editorial focus is somewhat different.
gazeta.ru’s take on the conference, in part (bolding mine):
"Putin continued his rant, saying: ‘‘If you are an American – you are in danger. If you are a Christian you are in danger. If you are an atheist – you are also in danger. And even if you decide to become a Muslim and to get circumcised, you will probably still be in danger. I know many places in Moscow where this [operation] can be performed. I recommend you do it so that nothing ever grows there again.’’
The outburst was followed by a terrible silence in the conference hall. It seemed to take the audience some time to digest Putin’s words. Then he went on: ‘‘If we do not fight the bandits, we will have them not only in Moscow, New York and Washington, we will have them in many other countries of the world.’’
**What circumcision and the places in Moscow where it can be done have to do with combating terrorism, none of those present could quite fathom. Presidential aides, forced to explain what he had meant by those words after the news conference, said that the President ‘‘was exhausted’’, and that ‘‘he is sick and tired of Chechnya’’. **
Yeah, because, of course, western politicians, and especially US presidents, never have outbursts and never have words which were intended to be private reported to the public. Gimme a break. Anyone trying to make a big deal out of this is just playing games.
The fact is that Putin had his own translator and the only words issued officially are those spoken by the translator which did not contain these words.
I have seen plenty of outbursts and missteps by Western diplomats. Give Putin a break on this and feel free to criticize him on substantive issues.
