Picture for October 6, 2006.

specoperacia_gruzin, originally uploaded by nazarian.

Here is a snapshot of a www.Gazeta.ru Russian language news site article titled "Special operation 'Gruzin'". Gruzin is Russian for an ethnic Georgian. It is about the deportation of hundreds of ethnicly Georgians from Moscow to Tbilisi. It also mentions that some of the deportees were in Russia legally, meaning that their visas and residency registration papers were in order, menaing that there was no legal basis for their eviction.

I can't help but consider this ethnic cleansing. They have not yet started sending the Georgians to concentration camps (yet) but there are reports that certain right-wing groups and private citizens have started beating and sometimes murdering Georgians. This type of violence used to happen in Russia even before the recent escalation of the Russo-Georgian relations. The neo-nazi groups in Moscow and other cities of Russia would beat and sometimes kill people with dark complexion (basically, non-blondes) - dozens of people from Africa, the Caucasus (including Armenians) and Central Asia have been murdered during the recent years with near almost absolute impunity. At most, the Russian authorities have gently slapped the wrists of the perpetrators in the past.

It is a little sad that a nation, which lost millions of people in the hands of the German nazis, is doing the same.