Gravestones used as foundations found in the capital of Chechnya

In Chechnya, in the process of building underground utilities in the Lenin District of Grozny, gravestones monuments – the so-called "churts" – that were walled into the concrete foundation of the former buildings of the Republic's Hospital.

"Yesterday, the workers engaged in laying down underground utilities in Ali Mitaev Street – earlier known as Pervomayskaya – in the Lenin District of Grozny, stumbled upon the old foundation of the former Republic's Hospital. It turned out that churts had been used as the foundation base," a source from the administration of the Chechen capital told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to the source, it is unclear yet exactly how many churts had been walled into the basement of the building – the number can range from several hundreds to several thousands.

The detected parts of stone churts have inscriptions in Arabic; these gravestones date back to the 19^th and 20^th centuries. So far, the authorities have not decided what to do with the detected churts.

After the deportation of Chechens and Ingushes in 1944, plenty of ancient cemeteries and old guard towers in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ChIASSR) were demolished. Gravestones were used as bases for roads, bridges, building foundations and so on.

Only in late 1980s-early 1990s, people in Chechnya began openly talking about the use of churts from Chechen cemeteries in construction; before that the topic was a taboo.

"This has only name – vandalism. The equally grave sacrilege, in my opinion, is that the authorities of the republic closed the memorial to victims of the 1944 deportation, built in 1992 right in Pervomayskaya Street, which was based on the churts brought from different regions of the republic and earlier used as foundations of roads and building foundations. Now the area is cordoned with a high fence and is not available for review," said the head of a Chechen NGO.