Death
Of A Courageous Journalist
By Katrina Vanden
Heuvel
11 October, 2006
The Nation
Russia and the world have lost
a great and courageous journalist. The killing of Anna Politkovskaya
on October 7 is horrifying and shocking, but not unexpected. As Oleg
Panfilov, who runs Moscow's Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations,
said upon learning of her murder, "There are journalists who have
this fate hanging over them. I always thought something would happen
to Anya, first of all because of Chechnya."
It was "a savage crime,"
said former Russian President --and the father of glasnost--Mikhail
Gorbachev. "It is a blow to the entire democratic, independent
press. It is a grave crime against the country, against all of us."
Politkovskaya was just 48
years old when she was found in her apartment building, shot in the
head with a pistol. In the last decade, her unflinching reporting on
the brutality and corruption of the Chechen war made her one of the
bravest of Russia's journalists.
The numerous death threats
she had received in these last few years never slowed her. In fact,
when she was killed Politkovskaya was at work finishing an article--to
have been published Monday--about torturers in the government of the
pro-Kremlin Premier of Chechnya.
Politkavskaya was a fearless
chronicler of the mass executions, the torture, the rape and kidnappings
of Chechen civilians at the hands of Russian troops and security forces.
She understood the cancer that was the war--and wrote and spoke of how
the "Bush-Blair war on terror" had given Putin allowance to
say he was fighting international terrorism. In fact, the Kremlin's
policies and the brutal Russian occupation of Chechnya, she wrote in
many dispatches, were instead engendering the terrorists they were supposed
to eliminate.
Her raw and searing reports
on the human catastrophe of the Chechen war appeared primarily in Novaya
Gazeta, which has become in these last five years the main opposition
newspaper in Russia. It is to Novaya's credit that her crusading investigative
articles were published inside Russia. In the wake of her death, there
is concern that the next victim may be her newspaper. That's why it's
important that the international journalistic community defend the weekly
newspaper's independent, dissenting voice. (In a little-noted development,
last june Gorbachev became a minority partner/shareholder in Novaya.
His role may provide some protection from any kremlin attempts to curb
the paper's voice.)
I met Politkovskaya a few
times--in Moscow and in New York, including at a Committee to Protect
Journalist's dinner in New York where she received one of the many honors
that came her way in these last years.. she spoke with fierce intensity
about the horror of the war--and the injustice and corruption she believed
was strangling Russia. There was a bluntness to her personal style--as
there was to her investigative reporting. A mother of two, Politkovskaya
spoke of her fear, and the risks she knew she faced in taking on the
most powerful forces in Russia. But she never let that interfere with
what she believed passionately was her duty as a journalist. In an interview
two years ago with the BBC, Politkovskaya said "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. I think the duty of doctors
is to give health to their patients, the duty of the singer is to sing.
The duty of [the] journalist [is] to write what this journalist sees
is the reality. It's my one duty."
Her latest book, Putin's
Russia--an uncompromising indictment of her beloved country's corrupt
politics--has just been published in the US. Read it. But it is her
reporting on Russia's long-running brutal war --collected in a previous
book, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya,-- which best
explains what her friend Panfilov said on Saturday: "Whenever the
question arose whether there is honest journalism in Russia, the first
name that came to mind was Politkovskaya." And may it be remembered
that this brave and honest journalist never compromised on the fundamental
ideals of free speech and a free press in the long battle for human
rights in Russia.
Since 1992, forty-two journalists
in Russia have been killed--most in unsolved contract executions. Journalists--and
citizens of all countries who value the importance of a free press--should
join in calling on the Russian government to conduct an immediate and
thorough investigation in order to find, prosecute and bring to justice
those responsible for Anna Politkovskaya's murder--and those of her
colleagues.
Katrina vanden Heuvel has
been The Nation's editor since 1995.
Copyright © 2006 The
Nation
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