Anna Politkovskaya shot dead!
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Russian journalist shot dead
Associated Press
Saturday October 7, 2006
A prominent Russian journalist who was famous for her critical coverage of the war in Chechnya has been discovered dead in Moscow.
Anna Politkovskaya was found dead in an elevator in a Moscow apartment building by a duty officer at a central Moscow police station. She had been shot to death, and a pistol and four bullets were found nearby.
Her death is being investigated as murder, said Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for Moscow Prosecutor Yuri Syomin.
The shooting is thought to have taken place at about 4:30pm (11.30 GMT) in Ms Politkovskaya's apartment building, Dmitry Muratov, editor in chief of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper where she worked, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Ms Politkovskaya, a tireless investigative reporter and highly respected journalist, has chronicled the killings, tortures and beatings of civilians by Russian servicemen in reports that put her on a collision course with the authorities.
She wrote a book critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his campaign in Chechnya, documenting widespread abuse of civilians by government troops.
'Whenever the question arose whether there is honest journalism in Russia, almost every time the first name that came to mind was Politkovskaya,' said Oleg Panfilov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
He said Ms Politkovskaya had frequently received threats, and that a few months ago, unknown assailants had tried unsuccessfully to break into the car her daughter Vera was driving.
In 2001, she fled to Vienna, Austria, for several months after receiving email threats alleging that a Russian police officer she had accused of committing atrocities against civilians was intent on revenge.
Police officer Sergei Lapin was detained in 2002 based on Politkovskaya's allegations but the case against him was closed the following year.
'There are journalists who have this fate hanging over them. I always thought something would happen to Anya, first of all because of Chechnya,' Mr Panfilov said, referring to Ms Politkovskaya by her nickname.
Ms Politkovskaya began reporting on Chechnya in 1999 during Russia's second military campaign there, concentrating less on military engagements than on the human side of the war. She wrote about the Chechen inhabitants of refugee camps and wounded Russian soldiers, until she was banned from visiting the hospitals, Mr Panfilov said.
In 2004, she fell seriously ill with symptoms of food poisoning after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia during the school hostage crisis in Beslan, where many thought she was heading to mediate the crisis. Her colleagues suspected the incident was an attempt on her life.
She had been one of the few people to enter the Moscow theatre where Chechen militants seized hundreds of hostages in October 2002 to try negotiating with the rebels.
Ms Politkovskaya's murder is the highest-profile killing of a journalist in Russia since they July 2004 slaying of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.
Associated Press
Saturday October 7, 2006
A prominent Russian journalist who was famous for her critical coverage of the war in Chechnya has been discovered dead in Moscow.
Anna Politkovskaya was found dead in an elevator in a Moscow apartment building by a duty officer at a central Moscow police station. She had been shot to death, and a pistol and four bullets were found nearby.
Her death is being investigated as murder, said Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for Moscow Prosecutor Yuri Syomin.
The shooting is thought to have taken place at about 4:30pm (11.30 GMT) in Ms Politkovskaya's apartment building, Dmitry Muratov, editor in chief of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper where she worked, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Ms Politkovskaya, a tireless investigative reporter and highly respected journalist, has chronicled the killings, tortures and beatings of civilians by Russian servicemen in reports that put her on a collision course with the authorities.
She wrote a book critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his campaign in Chechnya, documenting widespread abuse of civilians by government troops.
'Whenever the question arose whether there is honest journalism in Russia, almost every time the first name that came to mind was Politkovskaya,' said Oleg Panfilov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
He said Ms Politkovskaya had frequently received threats, and that a few months ago, unknown assailants had tried unsuccessfully to break into the car her daughter Vera was driving.
In 2001, she fled to Vienna, Austria, for several months after receiving email threats alleging that a Russian police officer she had accused of committing atrocities against civilians was intent on revenge.
Police officer Sergei Lapin was detained in 2002 based on Politkovskaya's allegations but the case against him was closed the following year.
'There are journalists who have this fate hanging over them. I always thought something would happen to Anya, first of all because of Chechnya,' Mr Panfilov said, referring to Ms Politkovskaya by her nickname.
Ms Politkovskaya began reporting on Chechnya in 1999 during Russia's second military campaign there, concentrating less on military engagements than on the human side of the war. She wrote about the Chechen inhabitants of refugee camps and wounded Russian soldiers, until she was banned from visiting the hospitals, Mr Panfilov said.
In 2004, she fell seriously ill with symptoms of food poisoning after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia during the school hostage crisis in Beslan, where many thought she was heading to mediate the crisis. Her colleagues suspected the incident was an attempt on her life.
She had been one of the few people to enter the Moscow theatre where Chechen militants seized hundreds of hostages in October 2002 to try negotiating with the rebels.
Ms Politkovskaya's murder is the highest-profile killing of a journalist in Russia since they July 2004 slaying of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.
www.amnesty.org
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Amnesty International condemns the murder of human rights journalist Anna Politkovskaia
Amnesty International is shocked, saddened and deeply angered by the murder of Anna Politkovskaia, Russian human rights defender and journalist.
Amnesty International believes that Anna Politkovskaia was targeted because of her work as a journalist, reporting on human rights abuses in Chechnya and other regions of the Russian Federation.
"Amnesty International is appalled by the murder of Anna Politkovskaia", said Nicola Duckworth, Director of the Europe and Central Asia Programme. "Russia has lost a brave and dedicated human rights defender, who spoke out fearlessly against violence and injustice, and campaigned tirelessly to see justice done."
Amnesty International calls on the Russian authorities to investigate her murder thoroughly and impartially, to make the findings of the investigation public and for suspected perpetrators to be brought to justice in accordance with international law.
Amnesty International also urges the government of the Russian Federation to take urgent steps to ensure that all human rights defenders and independent journalists in Russia, including those working in the North Caucasus region, are able to carry out their activities in safety and without fear of harassment or intimidation.
Amnesty International extends its deepest sympathy to Anna Politkovskaia's family.
Background
According to media reports, a police official stated that a neighbour had found Anna Politkovskaia shot dead in a lift in the block of flats where she lived in Moscow at 5.10pm on 7 October 2006. According to the reports, the office of the procurator has opened a criminal investigation into "premeditated murder".
Russian journalist and human rights defender Anna Politkovskaia had reported about the human rights situation in Chechnya since 1999 for the newspaper Novaia Gazeta (New Newspaper). Her fearless and dedicated coverage of the conflict had been acknowledged through numerous awards including the Global Award for Human Rights Journalism from Amnesty International UK in 2001. She had also written extensively about abuses in other parts of Russia such as violence in the army, corruption in state structures, and police brutality.
Anna Politkovskaia faced intimidation and harassment from the Russian and Chechen authorities due to her outspoken criticism of government policy and action. She had been detained and threatened with serious reprisals for her reporting on several occasions, including being detained in June 2004 for several hours in Tsenteroi, Chechnya, at the house of Ramzan Kadyrov, now Prime Minister of Chechnya, where she says she was verbally abused and threatened. She was also reportedly prevented from travelling to Beslan, North Ossetia, in September 2004 during the hostage crisis there; she believed she had been deliberately poisoned on a plane from Moscow to Rostov-on-Don when she lost consciousness after drinking a cup of tea on the flight.
www.amnesty.org.uk
Montreal 2000
Toronto 2003
Montreal 2003
Halifax 2005
Hartford 2006
by Anna Politkovskaya
Novaya Gazeta
May 19 2002
[http://2002.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2002/15n/n15n-s12.shtml]
Do you still think you should be supporting the war in Chechnya because of some aim that's being pursued, so things wouldn't get worse? We have reached a stage in Russia now, where every schoolchild knows that Chechnya is being "cleaned", and adults no longer bother with the inverted commas.
"Zachistka" in this sense entails thoroughly sorting out someone or something and, on the whole, we prefer not to enquire too closely into who or what. For this meaning of this old word we have the war in Chechnya to thank, and more particularly the high-ranking military brass who routinely update us on television with the latest news from Russia's Chechen ghetto, popularly known as the "Zone of Anti- Terrorist Operations".
It is March 2002 and the thirtieth month of the second Chechen war. "Zachistka", if we are to believe the military, is precisely the aim of the current "special measures". From last November until now, lunatic waves of special measures have been sweeping over Chechnya: Shali, Kurchaloy, Tsotsan-Yurt, Bachi-Yurt, Urus-Martan, Grozny; again Shali, again Kurchaloy; Argun again and again; Chiri-Yurt.
Towns and villages are besieged for days; women wail; families try desperately to evacuate their adolescent sons - where to doesn't matter providing it's a long way from Chechnya; village elders stage protest demonstrations. Finally, we are regaled with general Moltenskoy himself, our supposed commander-in-chief of the 'Front Against Terrorism', festooned with medals and ribbons, there on the television screen, pumping adrenalin, larger than life; and invariably against a background of corpses and "cleaned" villages.
The general reports some recently achieved "significant success". But there's still no Khattab with Basayev.... And you know full well that something isn't right, because you went to school when you were little and can do enough mental arithmetic to add up the numbers of enemy fighters he claims to have caught over the past winter. It amounts to a whole regiment of them. Just the same as in last year's warfare season.
So, how many fighters are still there? What exactly does "zachistka" involve? What is the truth, and who is telling it? What have these special measures actually turned into? What is their aim? Last, and most important, what are their results?
- I was relieved when they took us out to be shot.
- Relieved? What about your parents? Didn't you think about them then, and how sad they would be?
Mahomed Idigov, recently taken out to be shot, is 16.
He is a pupil in the tenth grade of School No 2 in the town of Starye Atagi, Grozny region. He has a favourite pair of jeans, a much loved tape recorder, and a stack of pop music cassettes which he enjoys listening to. He's a typical 16-year-old. The only disturbing thing about him is his eyes, which have the level steadiness of an adult's. They don't go with his teenager's skin problems and adolescent gawkiness.
There something wrong, too, in the measured way Mahomed relates the story of what was done to him. In the course of "zachistka" he was subjected to the same electric torture as the grown men. Having themselves been tortured, these men pleaded with Russian officers not to torture the boy but to torture them again in his place.
- No way, was the reply. - We get good counter-terrorist information out of schoolboys.
When I ask about his parents, Mahomed pauses for a time. His eyebrows finally arch childishly as he tries not to cry. He manages, and replies clearly and directly, as you can when something's over,
- Other people get killed too.
Indeed. Why should Mohamed have it easier than other people. Everybody is in the same situation. The "zachistka" of Starye Atagi from 28 January to 5 February was the second time the town had been "cleaned" in 2002, and the twentieth time since the beginning of the second Chechen war.
It is subjected to "special measures" nearly every month. The official explanation is plausible: with a population of around 15,000, Starye Atagi is one of the largest towns in Chechnya. It is 20 kilometres from Grozny and ten from the so-called "Wolf's Gate", as Russian soldiers call the entrance to the Argun Gorge. It is considered a trouble spot full of terrorist wahhabites and their sympathisers.
But what has this to do with Mahomed? On the morning of 1st of February, when the twentieth "zachistka" was at its most ferocious, masked men seized the boy from his home in Nagornaya Street, threw him like a log into a military truck and took him to a "filtration point", where he was tortured.
- It was very cold that day. First we were "put against the wall" for several hours, which means you stand with your hands up and your legs apart, facing the wall. If you try to lower your arms you get beaten immediately. Any soldier who walks past is likely to hit you. They unbuttoned my jacket, pulled up my sweater and cut it into strips with a knife, like a clown's jacket.
- Why?
- Just to make me feel the cold more. They saw I was shivering.
I can't bear it. Mahomed is too dispassionate. I can't bear the calm, thoughtful look on his face as he relates his appalling story. I wish this child would at least cry and give me something to do. I could comfort him then.
- Did they hit you a lot?
- All the time. On the kidneys. Then they put me on the ground and dragged me through the mud by the neck.
- What for? Did you know why they were doing it?
- Just because. For fun.
- But were they trying to get something out of you?
- For a whole day there was nothing. They just hurt me. They took me to interrogation in the evening. They interrogated three of us. They showed me a list and said, "Which of these people are fighters? Where are they treated for injuries? Who is the doctor? Whose house do they sleep at? Which of your neighbours is feeding them?" I answered, "I don't know".
- And what did they say?
- They said, "Do you need some help?" And they tortured me with electric current. That's what they meant by helping. They connected the wires and turned a handle, like on a telephone. The more they turned it, the stronger the current that passed through me. They asked me where my older brother, "the wahhabite", was as well.
- And is he a wahhabite?
- No, of course not.
- What did you say?
- I didn't say anything.
- And what did they do?
- They passed the current through me again.
- Did it hurt?
Mahomed's head on his thin neck slumps down below his shoulders, into his angular knees. He does not want to answer, but it is an answer I need.
- It hurt a lot then?
- Yes, a lot.
- Is that why you were relieved when they took you out to be shot?
Mahomed is shaking as if he has a high fever. Behind him is an array of bottles with solutions for medicine droppers, syringes, cotton wool, tubes.
- Whose is this stuff? It's for me. They damaged my kidneys and lungs.
There are a lot of people in the room, but it's as silent as if we were in an uninhabited, sound-proof bunker. The men are completely motionless. Somewhere outside the Idigovs' house the nightly artillery barrage is starting, but nobody so much as stirs at its uneven booming which sounds like the drums at a funeral.
I realise that this war, which from force of habit we still call an 'anti-terrorist operation' has been lost. It can't be continued solely for the momentary gratification of a group of people who long ago has gone mad. The silence is broken by Mahomed's father, Isa, a haggard man whose face is deeply etched with suffering.
- I was wounded serving in the Soviet army. I served on Sakhalin. I know the way things are. During the last "zachistka" they took my oldest son. They beat him up and let him go, and I decided to send him as far away as I could, to people I know, where he'd be safe. Was I wrong to do that? During this "zachistka" they've crippled my middle son, Mahomed. What am I to do? My youngest is already eleven. How long will it be before they start on him? Not one of my sons is a gunman. They don't smoke or drink.
- How are we supposed to live? I do not know how. I only know that this is unacceptable.
I know too how it has come about: our entire country has joined hands to follow the lead of our great statesmen (and not only Russia, but Europe and America too), and at the beginning of the twenty-first century we are acquiescing without a murmur in the torture of children in a present-day European ghetto mendaciously called a 'zone of anti-terrorist operations'. The children of this ghetto will never forget what we have done.
"Zachistka" began on 28th of January. In the evening several soldiers and armored vehicles surrounded the village. By dawn all streets were swarmed with APC's with their ID numbers painted over with mud. Very low, as if approaching for landing, above the village, helicopters hovered, and roof tiles as maple leaves in the fall wind, flew from the roofs away, leaving them uncovered. In the morning, on 29th of January, Liza Yushayeva, being in the last month of her pregnancy, went into labour. This frequently occurs unexpectedly and doesn't depend on the periods and parameters of "spetzoperations" set up by General Vladimir Moltenskoy, who commands the United Grouping in Chechnya. Liza's relatives went to ask military men, who were standing in the nearest encompassment, to let the pregnant women pass into the hospital, but they didin't allowed it for a long time. The women loudly shamed them, they said, you have also mothers, wives, sisters. But they answered that they arrived here to kill those who are alive, not to help those who are giving birth.
As a matter of fact, it turn out, when servicemen ended their rage, this "process" went ahead, but Liza couldn't go those 300 meters, which was the distance to the doctor, which also was closed by troops by their "zachistka's cell". So, they began to negotiate again, about a vehicle, and again time passed away. Finally, Liza was brought to the hospital. But since there, entirely other soldiers stood, they pinned down the arranged driver and Liza to the wall - like to a fighter, who's been captured: hands up, legs spread wide apart. Yushayeva endured "the wall" for sometime and then she began to faint. Soon, a baby was born, but it was dead.
Do you still think you should be supporting this war because of some aim that's being pursued and so things wouldn't get worse? Things cannot get worse. We have lost all sense of the morality and restraint we were taught in less tumultuous times, and something more vile and loathesome than we could ever imagine has erupted from the murkiest depths of our souls.
- Do you deliver a dead baby, because you weren't allowed to give birth to a live one? - point blank, like a shot, asked a woman looking into Magomed's room.
- If you know the answer, you are still a happy person.
Anna Politkovskaya from Stariye Atagi
www.amnesty.org.uk
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/world/europe/30chechnya.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=a381ae015710fb2d&ex=1314590400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Finally, I would like to say that I had the priviledge to have a little collaboration with Anna Politkovskaya, few years ago. It is difficult to find journalists that, like her, search for information and write about the dignity of civilians in a war such as the Chechen war, while most of the other journalists simply report comments and search for no justice...
www.amnesty.org.uk
What's even scarier is that many on here believe the good ole authoritarian state is a good thing. Just search around!
www.amnesty.org.uk
State isn't necessarily authoritarian russian-style state either. Just look around!
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Anna Politkovskaya
Crusading Russian journalist famed for her exposés of corruption and the Chechen war
David Hearst
Monday October 9, 2006
The Guardian
If one word sums up the life and work of Anna Politkovskaya, Russia's foremost investigative reporter assassinated at the age of 48, it is bravery. She could have chosen another life. Born and raised in New York, the daughter of Ukrainian UN diplomats, she was part of a Soviet elite that looked after its own. As a child, she had the best of both worlds: her parents could smuggle banned books out of the country, so she could write her dissertation about whomever she pleased. She alighted upon a poet shunned by Moscow, the émigré Marina Tsvetayeva.
She took from her background the social self-confidence that comes from rubbing shoulders with four-star generals round the kitchen table. But the earth was moving under the Soviet empire, and unlike many of her circle who saw perestroika as an opportunity to cash in their privilege, Politkovskaya moved instinctively in the opposite direction. After graduating in journalism from Moscow State University in 1980, she joined the daily Izvestia, before switching to the small independent press, first with Obshchaya Gazeta, then Novaya Gazeta.
She never saw herself as a war correspondent; indeed, Russia's first disastrous foray into Chechnya, from 1994 to 1998, almost passed her by. It is an irony of her story that the war she did not write about 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, had the same effect as the coverage of Vietnam had done on American audiences 30 years earlier. The Kremlin opted to sue for peace.
At the time, Politkovskaya was writing about state orphanages and the plight of the old: "I was interested in reviving Russia's pre-revolutionary tradition of writing about our social problems. That led me to writing about the seven million refugees in our country. When the war started, it was that that led me down to Chechnya."
By the start of the second Chechen war in 1999, the Kremlin had learned its lessons. The absence of reporting from the other side and lock-down on the battlefield put the Federal Security Service (FSB) in charge and set Chechen against Chechen. That was when Politkovskaya came into her own as a campaigning journalist.
She was in little doubt that Russia had been provoked. The relatively moderate wing of Chechen resistance, led by its former president Aslan Maskhadov, had run out of money. Into the vacuum swept money from the Wahabbis and foreign fighters like the Arab known as Khattab. When 9/11 provided an international parallel, it was only too convenient for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Shamil Basayev (obituary, July 11), a Chechen warlord who dreamed of creating a Muslim state across the north Caucasus, linked up with Khattab and invaded Dagestan, a fragile patchwork of Christian and Muslim tribes and part of the Russian Federation.
Politkovskaya agreed that Russia had to react. "But it was the way they did it," she said. "It was clear to me it was going to be total war, whose victims were first and foremost going to be civilian."
What followed was an excoriating series of articles and two books baring Russia's soul to the atrocities committed in its name - events like the "cleansing operation" of a village called Starye Atagi from January 28 to February 5 2002, and the shooting of six innocent villagers on a bus by members of a GRU military intelligence patrol, who then set fire to the vehicle to make it look as if it had been hit by rebel rockets. Politikovskaya always said she wrote for the future; indeed, court action about that incident grinds on to this day.
Her first book, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya (2001), chronicled not so much what Russia was doing to Chechnya, but what Chechnya was doing to Russia. Putin's Russia (2004) described how new Russians got their money, through a combination of violence and old-fashioned thievery: it was to save the dying embers of democracy at home that she flew repeatedly back into the cauldron of the north Caucasus.
Politkovskaya had already used up several of her nine lives as a reporter. She had been locked in a hole in the ground by Russian troops and threatened with rape, kidnapped, and poisoned by the FSB on the first flight to Rostov after the Beslan school siege in 2004. She had acted as a negotiator in the Dubrovka theatre siege in Moscow in 2002, when 129 people died after the special services released gas into the building. In 2001, she had been forced to flee to Vienna. But she always came back for more, even at personal cost. Her husband left her. Her son pleaded with her to stop. Her neighbours, cowed by the attentions of the FSB in an upmarket street in central Moscow, shunned her.
For months she had been focusing on Ramsan Kadyrov, the son of a murdered Chechen president, who nurtured presidential ambitions himself. For some time, according to Politkovskaya, he had been telling anyone who would listen that her days were numbered. "The women in the crowd tried to conceal me because they were sure the Kadyrov people would shoot me on the spot if they knew I was there," Politkovskaya said. "They reminded me that Kadyrov publicly vowed to murder me. He actually said during a meeting of his government that Politkovskaya was a condemned woman."
In the last interview she gave, to the independent Radio Svoboda, Politkovskaya said she planned to publish in today's Novaya Gazeta the results of a large investigation into torture in Chechnya. The article was never sent. She is survived by her son Ilya and daughter Vera.
· Anna Politkovskaya, journalist, born 1958; died October 7 2006
www.amnesty.org.uk
PRESS RELEASE
10 October 2006
Russian Federation: President Putin must condemn the murder of Anna Politkovskaya
Amnesty International has called on President Vladimir Putin to condemn the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and show that there can be no impunity for such crimes. This would demonstrate his support for human rights defenders and independent journalists and the vital and legitimate role they play in Russian society.
In a letter to President Putin, Irene Khan, Amnesty International's Secretary General, said:
"We believe that it is crucial for such a strong political statement of support to come from the highest authority in Russia, the President. The statement should make clear that attacks on independent journalists and human rights defenders are unacceptable and that perpetrators of such attacks will face vigorous investigation and prosecution."
Amnesty International is shocked and appalled at the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya on 7 October. Amnesty International believes that Anna Politkovskaya was in all likelihood targeted because of her work as a journalist, reporting on human rights abuses in Chechnya and other regions of the Russian Federation. It is clear that such a murder is a serious blow to freedom of expression and the independence of the media in Russia.
"We note that the office of the procuracy was swift to open an investigation into her murder, and that Yuri Chaika, Procurator General, has taken charge of this investigation. We are urging the Russian authorities to ensure that this investigation be prompt, thorough and impartial, with the findings made public, and that suspected perpetrators be brought to justice in accordance with international law," Irene Khan said.
Amnesty International has also noted that President Putin has stated that all necessary measures will be taken to investigate Anna Politkovskaya’s murder, and that the President and Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic have spoken out against her murder.
"However we believe that the Russian authorities need to do far more to support and protect human rights defenders and independent journalists in Russia," Irene Khan said.
Together with other Russian and international non-governmental organizations, (NGOs), Amnesty International wrote to President Putin in March of this year, in the run up to Russia taking on the Chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, asking him to make a statement in support of human rights defenders and independent media. In July this year, he met with Russian and international NGOs, including Amnesty International, during the Civil G8 event.
"President Putin must follow through such initiatives by responding to individual cases of egregious attacks on individual activists and journalists. Without such a response, there is a danger that initiatives such as the Civil G8 are only a public relations exercise," Irene Khan said.
The organization also asked President Putin to personally ensure that the authorities investigate all reported instances of harassment, intimidation and threats of human rights defenders and independent journalists in Russia, and that officials at every level of the state apparatus, including law enforcement officials, respect the legitimacy of the work of human rights defenders and independent journalists and allow them to carry out their work without hindrance or harassment.
"President Putin must show unequivocal commitment to protecting the rights if independent media and NGOs in Russia. Without President Putin's personal commitment little will change," Irene Khan said.
www.amnesty.org.uk
scary friggin world out there people
True ... Behaving like a terrorist isn't the greatest way to combat terrorism.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/11/wputin11.xml
"I did not know Anna personally but when I heard of the murder I got very scared," said Alexander Glushenko, a nuclear physicist who recently wrote a book about his experiences of containing the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. "I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that now anyone who writes the truth can be killed."
www.amnesty.org.uk
Human Rights Group Is Shut Down
The Associated Press
Prosecutors have acted to close down a human rights group that has regularly exposed abuses against civilians in Chechnya, in what the group's head denounced as an attempt to silence criticism of the war.
The Nizhny Novgorod regional prosecutor's office said Wednesday that a court in the city would examine a request from prosecutors to shut down the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society on Thursday.
"The government cannot accept any criticism of its conduct in Chechnya," said the group's leader, Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, who linked the threatened closure to the weekend murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
"Whoever ordered it [the killing], it's absolutely clear that the authorities either were directly behind it or at the very least created the conditions that allowed it to happen," said Dmitriyevsky, who was one of thousands of mourners who attended Politkovskaya's funeral on Tuesday.
His nongovernmental organization, which successfully fought off an attempt to close it last year, has faced increased pressure from the government in recent months. In February, a court handed Dmitriyevsky a two-year suspended sentence after finding him guilty of inciting ethnic hatred.
The rights group has vigorously campaigned against the conflict against separatists in Chechnya and published reports alleging torture, abductions and murder of civilians by government forces.
The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society said in a statement that prosecutors justified the demand for its closure under a new law that made it illegal for an NGO to be headed by a person with a criminal record.
The restrictive law, which came into effect early this year, imposed government oversight of NGO work and financing, giving the authorities scope to close down groups whose activities are perceived to contradict their stated goals or harm state interests.
"This marks the start of a general campaign against NGOs which are involved in monitoring Chechnya," warned Oleg Orlov from Memorial, the leading Russian human rights body, of the move against the Nizhny Novgorod group. "We expect to be next."
www.amnesty.org.uk
This is Anna Politkovskaya's final unfinished article for her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. It was written shortly before she was murdered last Saturday. After two wars of independence, Russian-backed forces are torturing a whole generation of young Chechens, she writes, to try to restore order in the troubled north Caucasus region
By Anna Politkovskaya
Published: 13 October 2006
Dozens of files cross my desk every day. They are copies of criminal cases against people jailed for "terrorism" or refer to people who are still being investigated. Why have I put the word "terrorism" in quotation marks here?
Because the overwhelming majority of these people have been "fitted up" as terrorists by the authorities. In 2006 the practice of "fitting up" people as terrorists has supplanted any genuine anti-terrorist struggle. And it has allowed people who are revenge-minded to have their revenge - on so-called potential terrorists.
Prosecutors and judges are not acting on behalf of the law and they are not interested in punishing the guilty. Instead, they work to political order to make the Kremlin's nice anti-terrorist score sheet look good and cases are cooked up like blinys.
This official conveyor belt that turns out "heartfelt confessions" is great at providing the right statistics about the "battle against terrorism" in the north Caucasus (where Chechnya is).
This is what a group of mothers of convicted young Chechens wrote to me: "In essence, these correctional facilities (where terrorist suspects are held) have been turned into concentration camps for Chechen convicts. They are subjected to discrimination on an ethnic basis. The majority, or almost all of them, have been convicted on trumped-up evidence.
"Held in harsh conditions, and humiliated as human beings, they develop a hatred towards everything. An entire army (of ex-convicts) will return to us with their lives in ruins and their understanding of the world around them in ruins too..."
In all honesty, I am afraid of this hatred. I am afraid because, sooner or later, it will burst into the open. And for the young men who hate the world so much, everyone will seem like an outsider.
The practice of "fitting up" terrorists raises questions about two different ideological approaches. Are we using the law to fight lawlessness? Or are we trying to match "their" lawlessness with our own?
Recently, at Russia's request, Ukraine handed over a certain Beslan Gadaev to Moscow. He is a Chechen and was arrested at the start of August in Crimea during a document check.
He was living there as a forced resettler. Here are some excerpts from the letter he sent me on 29 August: "After being extradited from Ukraine to Grozny (the Chechen capital) I was taken to a police station and asked whether I had killed members of Anzor Salikhov's family as well as family members of Anzor's friend. I swore I had killed nobody and not spilt any blood, neither Russian nor Chechen. The policemen said with certainty: "No you are a killer." I again denied it.
"They began to beat me. At first, they punched me twice in the area of my right eye. While I was coming to, they tied me up and handcuffed me to a metal bar lodged behind my knees so I couldn't move my hands, though I was in handcuffs anyway. Then they took me, or rather they took the metal bar jammed behind my legs, and suspended me between two stools at a height of about one metre. As soon as they had me suspended, they attached wires to my little fingers. They began to administer electric shocks while they beat me with rubber truncheons wherever they could.
"I don't remember how long it lasted but I started to lose consciousness due to the pain. Seeing this, they asked me whether I was ready to talk. I replied that I would talk but I didn't know what about. I spoke to spare myself from torture, even for a little while. They took me down, removed the metal bar, and flung me to the floor. They said 'talk'.
"I said I had nothing to say. They responded by hitting me with the metal bar in the area of my right eye where they had already struck me. Then they hung me up again, the same as before, and repeated the same process. I don't remember how long this lasted ... they repeatedly poured water on me.
"Around lunchtime, a policeman in civilian clothing came up to me and told me some journalists had come to see me and that I had to confess to three murders and a robbery.
"He said that if I didn't agree they would repeat everything (the torture) and would break me by sexually assaulting me in some way. I agreed to comply and gave an interview to the journalists and they (the police) forced me to testify that the injuries I had received from them had been sustained in the course of an escape attempt..."
Zaur Zakriev, a lawyer defending Beslan Gadaev, informed Memorial (a human rights organisation) that his client had suffered physical and psychological violence on the premises of the Grozny police force.
In the medical ward of prison number one in Grozny where Gadaev is laid up, charged with "banditry", a document details his many wounds. His lawyer, Zakriev, has forwarded these complaints to the prosecutor of the Chechen Republic.
The text breaks off here with the article unfinished. Politkovskaya's newspaper, 'Novaya Gazeta', has promised to investigate the issues raised in the piece
Translation by Andrew Osborn
www.amnesty.org.uk
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965