The BBC reported some good news about Chechnya after a long time today. 

There is of course a big element of tragedy in it. In 2000, Fatima Bazorkina saw television footage of her son being questioned by Russian military personnel. The questioning ended when a Russian general present ordered that he be taken away and shot. He was never seen again. It's all too common a story for the Chechens. Incidentally, the general was later given a medal.

The one good thing to have come of this particular case is that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled against the Russian government on it. I would hazard a guess, though, that no one will take away that guy's medal.

The feeling of relief that even this tiny bit of good news from Chechnya has on me has got me thinking. Identity is a funny thing. I've never met anyone from Chechnya. But somehow, a vague sense of sharing a Muslim identity with them makes me feel some sort of connection. Maybe since I know nothing else about the life of this woman's son, knowing that we may have had just this one thing in common makes it easy for me to put myself in his shoes. I like to think I might have the same sort of reaction if the only thing I knew about him was that he was an Alan Moore fan. Personal details like that make it harder to think of someone as a statistic, which is sadly what most of the news becomes otherwise.

There's always the possibility that I've been programmed to feel this way by some sort of insidious pan-Islamic ideology; but I don't really go in for that sort of thing. It's only 35 years ago that millions of Bangladeshis were killed by the Pakistani army for precisely that ideology.

Good on you, EU. Just goes to show how important the International Criminal Court could be if Bush hadn't been hell-bent on sabotaging it.