EDITORIAL: The Putin Holocaust

EDITORIAL

The Putin Holocaust

“All the vices of our bureaucracy were exposed by this tragedy. Its incompetence, corruption and links to businesses. We need legal changes strengthening criminal punishment for bureaucrats for violations in control and supervision area.  They simply signed fake documents. Did they not know about it? Of course they knew. Where did the municipal authorities look? Why did they close their eyes?”

That was dictator Vladimir Putin’s response to the holocaust in Perm that, by last Friday, had killed over 140 Russians.  He did not acknowledge that his country has one of the worst fire fatality rates on the planet.  He did not accept blame for having done nothing in ten years in power to alter that rate.  He did not acknowledge what his own remarks clearly prove, that the survey results of transparency International, so often attacked as “russophobic” by Russian nationalists, are in fact deadly accurate in declaring that Russia is one of the most corrupt societies on the planet.  He did not accept blame for having done nothing in ten years of power to alter that reality either.

One Photo is Worth a thousand Screams

The toll of fire fatalities at the “Khromaya Loshad” night club in Perm (pictured, left) has risen to 125, with 100 more currently hospitalized, many of them in critical condition.

At least 15 children lost both their parents in the conflagration.

Many of the victims were killed not by fire or smoke but by being stampeded by fellow Russians fighting to get out the only exit.

After the jump, shocking pictures from the scene reveal bodies stacked like cord wood in the streets, shirtless burned men standing without medical attention in the freezing cold, clueless party goers moments before hell broke loose, and the horrifically bleak burial conditions met by those who did not survive. They also show the special plane that was needed to carry burn victims from Siberia to Moscow because Perm, a major Russian city, lacks sufficient medical facilities to care for them.  You can also watch video from inside the club here and read a Russian blogger’s first-hand account of the events in English here.

We would like to ask:  Mr. Putin, why do you have money to buzz the USA with nuclear bombers and send weapons of war to the crazed Islamists in Iran but not to provide burn treatment in Perm?