Nation Erased — People Live
The Circassians are the indigenous people of Circassia, with a history stretching back thousands of years.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Tsarist Russia waged a century-long war of extermination, massacring entire villages, burning crops, and replacing the population with settlers from foreign ethnicities.
The genocide reached its peak in the 1860s — when Circassians were forced on death marches to the Black Sea coast, crammed into ships, and deported.
In total, over 90% of the Circassian population was either slaughtered, starved, or expelled from their homeland in one of history's darkest yet least-known crimes.
To this day, the Circassians remember this as ЦӀыцӀэкӀун (pronounced Tsitsekun, from the now-extinct Circassian Ubykh language: 'the killing of a people') and observe May 21 as a global day of mourning—honoring the lives lost and their enduring struggle not for revenge, but for justice.