Russian wrestler kicks and
urinates on Buddha statue
Shaun
Walker 5 April
2016 theguardian
A Russian wrestler faces jail after kicking a statue of Buddha in
the face, urinating on it and broadcasting the whole episode live
on the Periscope app.
Said Osmanov, 22, from Dagestan, appeared to urinate
on the statue, in Russia’s largely Buddhist region of Kalmykia, in
the country’s south-west, before aiming a high-kick at its
face.
The incident happened over the weekend in Elista,
the capital of Kalmykia. A group of wrestlers from Dagestan, a
neighbouring mainly Muslim region, were in town for a tournament
and on a tour of the city in the evening.
During a walk around the town, Osmanov committed the
sacrilegious acts at a Buddhist temple. As word spread on social
media, an angry crowd descended on the hotel where the wrestlers
were staying, forced Osmanov on to the street and demanded he
apologise on his knees for his actions. Police later arrived and
took the wrestler into custody.
Monks at Elista’s main Buddhist temple said on
Tuesday they planned a ritual cleansing ceremony for the Buddha
statue that had been violated by Osmanov’s actions.
In an attempt to prevent an ethnic conflict
erupting, Dagestani officials have flown to Kalmykia and made
statements condemning the act, while Osmanov, who remains in
custody,could be charged with hooliganism motivated by religious
hatred, the same charge that saw members of the punk group Pussy
Riotsentenced to
two years in jail for carrying out a “punk prayer” in Moscow’s main
cathedral.
Dagestan’s leader, Ramazan Abdulatipov, said he had
reprimanded the region’s sports minister and would be carrying out
educational work all sports groups in the region.
Kalmykia is a land of arid steppe on the shores of
the Caspian Sea in southern Russia. Its inhabitants, the Kalmyks,
are descendants of Genghis Khan’s Mongols and
practise Buddhism.
The region was run for many years by Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov, an eccentric businessman who also runs Fide, the world
chess organisation. He was replaced as Kalmyk leader in 2010 and
stepped down temporarily from Fide leadership after
being placed on a US sanctions list for
links to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, in
December.
Ilyumzhinov, who claimed to have been abducted by
aliens during the 1990s, was so obsessed with chess that he ordered
the construction of a “chess city” on the outskirts of Elista. He
also presided over a Buddhist revival in the region, after the
religion had been suppressed during the Soviet period. The Dalai
Lama visited Kalmykia in 1992.