Anna Politkovskaya's life Sacrificed for Social and Political Justice: Slain Russian Writer and Journalist,.
Author: Arthur Edgar E. Smith
Category: News and Society
Republish this article manually
Republish articles from News and Society category automatically
On 7th October 2006, Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building. The 48-year-old mother of two was fiercely critical of the Kremlin's actions in Chechnya. A pistol and four bullets were found near her body. Ms Politkovskaya's murder had all the hallmarks of a contract killing for which Moscow had become notorious. She had been known for her pioneering reporting on the Chechnyen war and in particular for her commitment to the people of Chechnya for which she won international recognition for her passionate reporting on their conflict in which she exposed human rights abuses.
Politkovskaya made her name reporting from lawless Chechnya, where many journalists and humanitarian workers have either been kidnapped or killed. She was arrested and subjected to mock execution by Russian military forces there, and was poisoned on the way to Beslan, but survived and continued her reporting.
Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958 to Soviet Ukrainian parents, both of whom served as diplomats to the United Nations. She was born in New York but grew up in New York and Moscow and graduated from the Moscow State University Department of Journalism in 1980. As a child, she thus had the best of both worlds, being a citizen of both the United States of America and the Russian Federation. Her parents smuggled banned books out of the country, so she could write her dissertation about whomever she pleased. She thus chanced upon a poet shunned by Moscow, the émigré Marina Tsvetayeva and wrote her thesis on his poetry.
She took from her background the social self-confidence of the elites. But as the changes brought in by perestroika were sweeping across and dismantling the Soviet Union, she unlike others of her social standing refused to use that as an opportunity to cash in on their privilege. After graduating in journalism from Moscow State University in 1980, she joined the daily Izvestia,where she worked for more than a decade from 1982 to 1993. She switched over to the small independent press working first with Obshchaya Gazeta as a reporter, editor of emergencies/accidents section, and assistant chief editor from 1994-1999., and then moving over to Novaya Gazeta, one of the few national Russian newspapers to take a consistently critical line on the Kremlin, From June 1999 to 2006, she wrote columns for this Russian biweekly.
Never seeing herself then as a war correspondent, Russia's first disastrous foray into Chechnya, from 1994 to 1998, almost passed her by. Ironically this war was brought to a halt by crusading journalism. Nightly reports chronicling the civilian cost of Russian artillery bombardments, broadcast on the independent television station NTV brought much furore as well as concern from the Russian public. The Kremlin as a result opted to sue for peace. At the time, Politkovskaya was writing about state orphanages and the plight of the old: She was then more interested in reviving Russia's pre-revolutionary tradition of writing about her social problems. She thus started writing about the seven million refugees in Russia. The start of the war thus led her down to Chechnya. By the start of the second Chechen war in 1999, Politkovskaya had launched out as a campaigning journalist
Outside Russia, Politkovskaya received wide acclaim for her work in Chechnya, where she frequently visited hospitals and refugee camps to interview the victims.. She said about herself that she was not an investigating magistrate but somebody who describes the life of the citizens for those who cannot see it for themselves, because what is shown on television and written about in the overwhelming majority of newspapers is emasculated and doused with ideology.
Her numerous articles critical of the war in Chechnya described abuses committed by Russian military forces, by Chechen rebels, and by the Russian-backed Chechen administration led by Akhmad Kadyrov and his son Ramzan Kadyrov. Politkovskaya chronicled human rights abuses and policy failures in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia's North Caucasus in several books on the subject, including A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya and A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya, which painted a picture of brutal war in which thousands of innocent citizens have been tortured, abducted or killed at the hands of Chechen or federal authorities. One of her most recent investigations was about alleged mass poisoning of hundreds of Chechen school children by an unknown chemical substance of strong and prolonged action, by which they were incapacitated for many months.
Unflinching in her narration of contemporary Russia in her writings which include books like A Dirty War, Putin's Russia and, A Russian Diary which she completed shortly before her death, she won fame for A Dirty War, a collection of articles mainly about the second Chechen conflict which began in 1999. In 2004, she jointly won the Olof Palme Prize for her human rights work with the commendatory citation " for her courage and strength when reporting in difficult and dangerous circumstances."
In addition to the physical threats she faced, Politkovskaya also was called to court several times for her reporting. A court hearing forced her to cancel an appearance at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York. World Voices Festival Director Salman Rushdie offered PEN's condolences to her family and her colleagues in Russia, and stressed PEN's determination to see that her voice continues to be heard. "Like all great investigative reporters, Anna Politkovskaya brought forward human truths that rewrote the official story. We will continue to read her, and learn from her, for years."
Her death has been marked all around the world with vigils, tributes and other events. International PEN, in association with Random House, presented The Truth: A Dangerous Pursuit - Remembering Anna Politkovskaya with Jon Snow, James Meek and Azar Nafisi on Wednesday 17th October 2007, at the Southbank Centre, London. The evening was one of several events in a series of commemorations around the world, marking the first anniversary of Anna's as yet unsolved murder. England's Channel 4 journalist Jon Snow, James Meek and Azar Nafisi discussed Anna Politkovskaya's legacy as an outspoken witness as well as explored the relationship between writers, readers and literature, and asking whose freedoms are at stake in the struggle for truth and uncensored expression.
"This Murderous Word Freedom" exhibits online originals of 70 excellent works selected from about 400 entries dedicated to the memory of Anna Politkovskaya and others who have suffered whilst trying to exercise their freedom of the press. A live exhibition in Moscow from the original cartoons posted on the internet was being planned. "Novaya Gazeta" (the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked) invited the artists for the conventional exhibition in Moscow, for which high quality prints were made from all the files and put on display.
Anna Politkovskaya describes the ruins of the Chechnyen capital, Groznyy in 'Hell' one of her articles: "The city ruins are like a new Caucasus mountain range. African-style famine. Painfully thin children. Living streets full of dead eyes. Mad and half-mad people. Streets teeming with weapons. Mines everywhere. Permanent explosions. Despair."
Her polemical style earned her many critics in Russia but her stories stood out from much of the mainstream Russian media and she pursued them at great personal risk, whether reporting from the war zone or receiving death threats in Moscow. She has been described as the conscience of the country's journalism, one of the few remaining high-profile, independent journalists in Russia, a brave and dedicated human rights defender, by Amnesty International, her journalist union amongst others.
Whenever the question arose whether there is honest journalism in Russia, almost every time the first name that came to mind was Politkovskaya." Ms Politkovskaya spoke out fearlessly against violence and injustice, and campaigned tirelessly to see justice done".
In October 2002, she was one of the few people to enter the Moscow theater, where Chechnyen militants had seized hundreds of hostages, in a bid to negotiate. There she acted as a negotiator with the rebels for the release of the hostages.
In 2004, she tried to go to Beslan during the school siege but fell ill with food poisoning on the flight there. Some suspected a plot to incapacitate her. The same year her book Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy depicted Russia as a country where human rights are routinely trampled upon. Politkovskaya's last known article for Novaya Gazeta, published on 28th September 2006, condemns pro-Kremlin militias operating in Chechnya as part of Moscow's so-called Chechenisation policy. In 2001, she fled to Vienna, Austria, after receiving e-mail threats claiming a Russian police officer she had accused of committing atrocities against civilians wanted to take his revenge on her.
In an interview with the BBC, Ms Politkovskaya said she believed it was her duty to continue reporting, despite receiving such death threats:
"I am absolutely sure that risk is [a] usual part of my job; job of [a] Russian journalist, and I cannot stop because it's my duty," she said. "I think the duty of doctors is to give health to their patients, the duty of the singer to sing. The duty of [the] journalist [is] to write what this journalist sees in the reality. It's only one duty."
Though President Putin expressed his commitment to bringing the perpetrators to justice, it has taken a long time for the investigations to show signs of progress whilst International PEN along with other human rights bodies continues to show concern whilst campaigning on her behalf. Only on 28th August, 2007 were ten suspects arrested over the murder. Current and former police and security officers were then implicated. as part of an organized crime group probably linked to two other high profile murders in Moscow, Russia
Resource Box:
Keywords: anna politkovskaya.her killing, investigations, dying for social justice. putin, russia, chechnya, sacrifice
View Count: 659
Date Submitted: 5/14/2008
Most recent articles in
News and Society category:
Other related articles in
News and Society category: