Saturday, September 11, 2004
Elder of ZiyonA Russian's plans for a Sept 11 anniversary 'terror concert,' starring a female singer dressed as a suicide bomber, were thwarted on Thursday when outrage in the wake of the Beslan school massacre led to its cancellation.
A fierce-looking girl clad in a burqa-style black dress -- dubbed the 'Little Suicide Bomber' by the media -- was to sing about Muslim hardships on Saturday, three years since the plane attacks on U.S. cities that killed around 3,000 people.
Tickets to the show were made to look like plane tickets, the Izvestia daily said.
'The concert has been canceled ... Who in his right mind would agree to stage it after all that has happened in Russia?' said a spokeswoman for the venue, the House of Unions Hall.
The Beslan school siege, in which more than 300 children and adults died last week, was Russia's bloodiest hostage crisis. It was the latest in a string of attacks blamed on Chechen rebels including two plane crashes and a suicide bombing in Moscow.
Ivan Shapovalov, the impresario behind the pop duo Tatu whose lesbian schoolgirl image courted controversy, said he cared little about what Russians might think about his show which he called the 'terror concert.'
'If people are scared by a woman wearing a black headscarf, that means they are sick themselves,' he told Izvestia.
Shapovalov did not confirm the concert had been canceled.
'The venue organizers have not told us about the cancellation. We don't know what's going on. They didn't even let us rehearse,' an aide said.
