Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (59 page)

Condoleezza Rice:
You have recalled for us a very sad history of the last six years and one with which I am familiar. There have been many tragedies for
Novaya gazeta
, and you must feel it very personally. We have told the Russian Government that these murders and the murders of other journalists must be thoroughly investigated and people must begin to understand that those who have done this will pay the price.

It’s hard for me to answer your question because I know these have been great personal losses. It’s difficult to step back and give an abstract answer to a very personal human question. But I think that if you look at history and struggles in many different countries under many different historical circumstances, there have been people who sacrificed on the basis of principle, people who sacrificed for a cause and those sacrifices are never in vain because ultimately freedom will win out.

In particular, investigative journalists are very often in danger because by their very nature they expose the truth. Very often they run afoul of those who have a lot at stake and a lot to lose if the truth comes out. I recognise that it’s a very dangerous profession, but without investigative journalists who are willing to seek the truth, it’s very hard for a democracy to function.

If it is any comfort at all – at a personal level I’m sure that it’s not – at a professional level if it is any comfort you should know that these
murders have received world-wide attention. People are watching. People are pressing for a full investigation and for punishment of those who have committed these crimes. You are not alone in your struggle.

Novaya gazeta:
How important is it for a politician to have strong emotions? By that I mean feelings of kindness and openness.

Condoleezza Rice:
It is important for people who are engaged in politics to have human emotions, compassion, and most importantly to have principles. I watch very carefully the influence and tremendous effect that political leaders can have on the lives of ordinary people, and they need to be people who understand their impact.

It’s very important for politicians, particularly in democratic societies, not to lose touch with the people that they represent. Even the President of the United States leaves the White House and visits with schoolchildren, or goes to a retirement home and sees the effects of our policies on older people. I think it’s very important for politicians, and I know that when the President does this it has a big effect on him.

Ultimately I think a politician has to lead people and not be led by them, and that very often means making difficult, sometimes unpopular decisions. People expect their leaders to do exactly that. If the job were only to make easy decisions, anyone could do it. Because it’s often a matter of difficult decisions, I think it takes a very special person to be a politician in a democracy. I admire very much our people who have entered political life. I admire people who want to serve their country in that way. It’s not easy because you’re very often making difficult, unpopular decisions for the good of a large number of people.

Novaya gazeta:
So, politics is not just a form of business?

Condoleezza Rice:
No, it’s not. It’s a form of service. [Politicians have] different values than those who go into other professions.

Dmitriy Muratov:
Yesterday we read a report from Reporters Without Borders [The
Worldwide Press Freedom Index for 2005
] which shows Russia in 138th place in the world in terms of free speech, but the United States is in 137th place in respect of reporting on events in Iraq.
What is this – self-censorship by journalists or state policy? Fear or patriotism?

Condoleezza Rice:
It’s certainly not government policy. But I’ll tell you something, I watch our reporting on Iraq every day, and our reporters in Iraq are very tough on the US Government. It was the American press that exposed the very bad events at Abu Ghraib. That came out first in the American press. I don’t know what study you’re talking about, but the US press reports exactly what they think, and they try to do it accurately. With press reporting – with freedom of the press – goes responsibility. It’s not just reporting anything you hear or anything someone tells you. The American press tries to be accurate in what they are reporting, but they report in the very toughest of circumstances.

There is one circumstance that sometimes the American press will not report: if it is going to put our soldiers in danger. Then they may decide that they do not want to report on something that might cost American soldiers their lives. That’s another part of press responsibility. The Government can’t force the
New York Times
not to print something, but the
New York Times
can decide if something is potentially dangerous to the lives of American soldiers and not print it.

Zoya Yeroshok, Andrey Lipsky, Dmitriy Muratov, Ilya Politkovsky

Elena Romanovna, Philologist, Translator

From a radio behind a grille outside a shop I heard snatches of a report: “Militia and ambulances in front of the entrance … journalists waiting for the body of Anna Politkovskaya to be brought out …” I stopped and looked about me, at people’s faces. It was as if nothing had happened. Had they not heard? I ran home, turned on Echo of Moscow radio, and stood numb with shock by the door. Eight years ago I felt the same blow when I heard Galina Starovoitova had been murdered, and the same sense of emptiness, except that now it felt
more like a vacuum which makes it impossible to breathe or go on living.

I went to the Metro station to buy
Novaya gazeta
. There were several people in front of me also buying newspapers and magazines. I looked hopefully over their shoulders, but no. A glossy crossword magazine,
Sport, Vedomosti, World of Crime
. I hunched up against the cold, feeling lonely and ill at ease in my own town. And now also frightened. I looked at the mothers walking placidly by with their prams. Were they not afraid? Apparently not. They probably really believe that life in Russia has improved, that per capita income is rising inexorably, and that we are the best and strongest superpower in the world. They probably believe that Russia’s democracy is in great shape, only ours is a special kind, “sovereign” democracy which is completely different from what they have in the West. From developed socialism to sovereign democracy! Any day now they will blow the dust off the old history textbooks, and today’s schoolchildren will sing a slightly adapted Soviet national anthem in patriotism lessons, under a portrait of little Volodya (only now not Ulyanov but Putin), and will solemnly promise to do their duty to their Great Motherland and learn to inform on each other.

Where now are all those who huddled round their radios to listen with bated breath to the speeches of the Democrats at the First Congress of Deputies, who collected signatures for the Sakharov Constitution, and rejoiced when the Berlin Wall came down? The years of my youth were those of perestroika. How avidly we read
Dr Zhivago, Gulag Archipelago
, Dudintsev’s
White Clothes
. Could I have dreamt then that very soon we would recoil, back to the times of the Soviet regime but repainted now with the dubious values of consumerism, pseudo-religion and fascism? In those days the process of democratisation seemed irreversible, but how wrong we were. How short our memories are. Here we are, wanting back under that yoke, wanting a return to the repressions, wanting the Gulag. History teaches us nothing.

I am ashamed today to be Russian because of Chechnya, the anti-Georgian campaigns, and the Russian nationalist processions. I am
ashamed to be Russian Orthodox because the Church made no attempt to protect its brother Georgians, and because it will never canonise Anna Politkovskaya who, in its stead, comforted and interceded for the helpless. I am ashamed to be a native of St Petersburg because those 200 people who came to the meeting in memory of Anna Politkovskaya were even fewer than the number of journalists murdered in the post-Soviet period, and also because the courts of Petersburg acquit the killers of “non-Russians.” What does that leave? It leaves just one thing: to continue to be a human being. “Not to bow down before the times, but to be the brains of your age, to be a human being,” as the poetess Sofia Parnok wrote in an equally hopeless era in the last century.

Today it is 40 days since Anna died, and I will again light candles. Anna Politkovskaya had the strength and courage to be a human being. May I be able to do the same!

Vladimir Ryzhkov, Deputy of the State Duma

I am shocked. It seems unbelievable. At this moment in time Politkovskaya was probably one of the best-known journalists not only in Russia but in the entire world. She received numerous international awards for her work. In its repercussions this murder is comparable with the murders of Yury Shchekochikhin and Vlad Listiev.

I find the motives completely obvious. All these years Anna Politkovskaya concentrated principally on Chechnya, Beslan and
Nord-Ost
, that is, the topics most disagreeable to Russia’s rulers, the FSB and the Army. Any of these organizations might have commissioned this crime. I frankly do not believe it will be solved, because those with an interest in her death are precisely the people who are to conduct the investigation. I hope nevertheless that a miracle will occur and that the killers will be found.

Russia is becoming an ever more dangerous country for independent journalists and opposition politicians. None of us is immune to a similar fate.

Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia

She was one of the greatest friends of our country. In recent years she wrote excellent articles about Georgia. In Russia many decent people have come forward to protest at her killing, the first time that has happened on such a scale. I am filled with admiration and thank those people.

Gennadiy Seleznyov, Deputy of the State Duma

I grieve together with the
Novaya gazeta
team at the death of Anna Politkovskaya. For us she was a highly professional journalist, an honest person and a great colleague. I had the privilege of being closely acquainted with Anna, and I know she was a true citizen of our country. It is patently obvious that she was killed for telling the truth, because of her conscience, and her desire to change our life for the better.

Liza Umarova [Chechen singer], with profound sorrow, on behalf of the Chechens and Ingushes

On October 7 a disgraceful, cynical and cowardly shot from round the corner was fired at a woman from whose writing we learned the truth. Anna Politkovskaya! This fine, proud name we, Chechens and Ingushes, always pronounced with more reverence and admiration than any other name we had spoken for over 50 years. She represented the honor and conscience of Russia, and probably nobody will ever know the source of her fanatical courage and love of the work she was doing. She was a journalist like no other working today. She loved Russia so much that she turned down the opportunity of going to live and work in America, in security, in peace and quiet. “
Novaya gazeta
still needs me,” she said. On this holy Muslim festival of Ramadan, we Chechens and Ingushes pray for you and your soul. We will dedicate our lives to the cause you began. No one can replace you, but we will try to fight as you did to enable people to live honorably in Russia.

The Union of Journalists of Russia

The dozens of assignments in the North Caucasus she survived, but now, in the entrance to her home, in the lift … A person of extraordinary courage and inflexible will, she was and remained to the end an example of the fact that in all circumstances a journalist can (and should, as she herself believed and demanded of her colleagues) write at the dictate solely of their conscience, with no nod to prevailing circumstances and no submission to them. She, just like her colleague Shchekochikhin, “was careless about the enemies she chose,” and the more powerful, shameful and vengeful those enemies proved, the more heedlessly and furiously she attacked them. She brooked no compromises in the struggle for what she considered the truth, and tried to demonstrate that truth to all who read or heard her. For this she was hated, threatened and hunted, on one occasion in the most literal sense of the word.

And today, when we must try to ensure that the killers and those who ordered the killing are found and punished, let us remember what Politkovskaya wrote about:
Nord-Ost;
Beslan; abductions and torture of people in Chechnya; violations of human rights; despotism and government crimes. Let us say straight out: there could have been no other reason why she was killed. That is why it is so important that the answer to the question of who did it should be obtained by society, to enable it to decide how to react.

Sergey Uralsky, Consultant in Jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and Retired Federal Judge

I express my profound condolences in connection with the murder of Anna Politkovskaya … We are losing so many people. The state authorities promise to detect, to track down, to bring to court, to give a proper assessment, but on their faces what we see is not real grief, only a mask. There are a lot of these masks. Now yet again no less a person than the Prosecutor-General of the Russian Federation has taken the investigation under his absolutely and completely personal control.
What does “personal” mean in this context? Why “control” and not “supervision”? Why not individual, collective, corporate, or some other kind of nonsensical “control”? What help has it been in the past? What help is it going to be now? Why should Mr Yury Chaika feel the need to faff about, to control, to involve himself in the detail of conducting a murder inquiry? He does not need to “control” the investigation, but to find the killers. Some hope there is of that. It is really all just too much trouble for them.