Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (60 page)

Torture. They are no longer capable of doing anything without torture. How could they possibly conduct an investigation or bring a case to court without torture? And when the accused protest that they have been tortured – physically, with cold, and hunger and vile forms of degradation – they reply that this is just criminals slandering our agencies, trying, together with journalists, to discredit the system.

They could not believe that this frail woman would stand up and say torture in their torture chambers was unacceptable. They couldn’t conceive that there were still people in Russia who cared about that sort of thing! And so they killed her.

The Voice of Beslan Association

It is difficult, intolerable to have to say of her, she is dead. We grieve together with the whole world. The life of a writer has been cut off, a journalist at the very peak of her talent. Courageous, brave, Anna lived a special life without compromise, and for the people of the Caucasus there was still hope. Frail and seemingly defenceless, by the power of her limitless courage she was the hope of many living here, ordinary people who wanted to live in peace. She was a spokesman, from whom society learned about the monstrous misconduct of the state authorities towards their own citizens.

Anna was not only a famous journalist, but also a civil rights defender, and the pride of all of Russian society. The cause of this crime was her courage and the crystalline purity of her conscience. In Russia it is the defenders of human rights who pay for the thuggish policies of the authorities.

There is no doubt that this was a political martyrdom. Anna simply could not take no interest, although she surely knew better than anybody that there would be no pity for her either. She did not retreat, she rushed to try to save the children of Beslan, and would have saved many if she had not been poisoned. In Beslan they were afraid of her fearlessness.

She took part in the investigation of the tragedy in Beslan, in
Nord-Ost
, exposed the crimes in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan. The authorities of every stripe feared these exposures, because it was simply impossible to silence Anna.

Who has dared to commit this dreadful, infamous act?

One way or another, the murder of Anna Politkovskaya is a consequence of the lawlessness of the government authorities and their immoral policies, which increasingly betray their true nature. It is a matter of honor for the law enforcement institutions to investigate this villainy thoroughly and to name the names of the murderers.

But if this crime is not solved, if the crime is not investigated properly and the murderers are not put in the dock, it will be clear in whose interests the murder was committed. Behind the invariable failure to investigate and solve such major crimes stand the authorities, whose limitless irresponsibility gives birth to them.

Voice of Beslan offers its condolences to the family and friends of Anna Politkovskaya, to all who knew her and worked with her, including the
Novaya gazeta
team.

Anna always was and will remain for us an example of amazing purity and courage.

Lech Walesa, Founder of Solidarity, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, 1983, President of Poland, 1992–5

I did not know Anna Politkovskaya personally, but heard about her work, the work of a journalist who tirelessly defended the rights of those deprived of freedom, and who stood as a sentinel for truth and freedom of speech. She knew she risked paying the highest price for
her activity. Her murder is a dreadful crime and a violation of free speech. It is a stain on the honor of the representatives of the free world, and also on my own.

When talking to the Russian government authorities, people in the free world should not talk only about oil, gas, or the conquest of space. We should speak also about the problems of guaranteeing freedom, tolerance and respect for the views of others. This needs to be done if only to prevent a repetition of such crimes in the future.

For my part, I pray for Anna Politkovskaya in the words of an old Polish prayer, “Send her Thy eternal peace, O Lord.” Some day we will meet in another, better world.

Grigoriy Yavlinsky, Leader of the Yabloko Political Party

The Yabloko Party considers the murder of Anna Politkovskaya to be political. Direct political responsibility for her murder is borne by those in charge of the country who condone the physical extermination of their political opponents. Her journalism was a profession not of the word, but of deeds, action. For the publication of facts and evidence of crimes committed by the government authorities and in their name, she was hated by people who did not trouble to conceal their hatred. Her striving to be in the most difficult situations in order to intervene, to help, to tell the truth, elicited active counter-measures. She was prevented from reaching Beslan in September 2004. What she has been kept away from now she can no longer tell us. She was a very well-known, internationally renowned political journalist. For a murder of this kind the President bears personal responsibility. For the murder of a well-known, outstanding political journalist who was systematic in her opposition, the state authorities bear full responsibility. Russia, having lost a journalist of this calibre, has been diminished by another major figure.

Yegor Yeremeyev, Omsk

On behalf of the students of the Physics Faculty of Omsk State University I offer condolences to the family, colleagues, and everybody who knew Anna Politkovskaya. I appeal to Anna’s colleagues and very much beg them to continue to work, to write, and to tell the truth about our lives.

Victor Yushchenko, President of Ukraine

The news of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, well known as a journalist and human rights defender, has been received in Ukraine with a sense of great sorrow and disquiet. Please accept my sincere condolences on the occasion of this irreparable loss. People in Ukraine will remember Anna Politkovskaya as a courageous person and professional who defended the high ideals of democracy and freedom of speech. I hope that those guilty of committing this terrible crime will be found and justly punished.

Akhmed Zakayev, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

The Chechen people has been outraged to learn of the vile contract killing of Anna Politkovskaya who has been a fearless witness of its torments of recent years. Motivated by human sympathy and a sense of professional duty, Anna never succumbed to fear, or to the official anti-Chechen hysteria. She was one of the few Russian journalists who systematically, year after year, exposed the crimes against humanity which the Russian military machine visited upon the defenceless civilian population of the Chechen Republic.

The memory of this great Russian woman, who shared the tragedy of the Chechen people and did everything she could to convey the truth about it to the world community, will forever remain in our hearts and will, in the course of time, be perpetuated in the Republic of Chechnya.

TRIBUTES AND RECOLLECTIONS BY COLLEAGUES FROM
NOVAYA GAZETA
, FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Anna’s Mother Discharged from Hospital

Novaya gazeta
, November 16, 2006

[Anna’s mother, Raisa Mazepa, went into hospital shortly before the death of her husband. She was in the Clinic of the President’s Management Board and was being prepared for an operation.]

“We kept her husband’s death from her for two days,” Alexander Altunin, manager of the surgical department recalls. “Then we decided to tell her, after first giving her a sedative injection. She bore her grief with great dignity, and even agreed to stay in hospital. We performed a major operation on her. Raisa Alexandrovna was anaemic and we had to give her many injections of drugs, nutrient solutions and blood substitutes. She took it stoically. Her daughters visited her constantly. For something like that suddenly to happen …”

When news of the murder came out, the television and telephone were switched off in Raisa’s ward. For the first day the family concealed Anna’s death from her, but they realized they could not continue to do so for long: reports of the murder were in every edition of the news. At any moment Raisa might go out into the corridor and see a television or talk to one of the patients.

“Yury and Lena phoned me and said it was probably best that she should be told,” Alexander Altunin recalls. “I phoned the cardiologist, Raisa was given a cardiogram, and we established that her heart was in good order. In the morning she was given a sedative and then her daughter Lena came with her husband. Physically Raisa bore her grief reasonably well, partly, no doubt, because of the sedative. I spoke to her the day after the murder. She was very stoical, told me about herself and her work in the USA, and then said that her daughter’s death was like a stab in the back.”

When Raisa was discharged from the hospital, she was feeling well, walking steadily, and her family sent her off to convalesce. She is recovering from the operation rapidly now.

“During the whole time she was in hospital Raisa Alexandrovna never once showed her grief. She is a very reserved person, and very brave.”

Contact through Prayer Alexander Politkovsky

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is strife, harmony
Where there is error, truth
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy.

The Unpublished Letters of Marina Tsvetayeva
is how it all began. As a student in the Faculty of Journalism I sat in the kitchen of Anna’s flat. She was a schoolgirl then, and while my fellow students were taking notes, she and I dissected the gossamer of the poetess’s idiosyncratic punctuation. Prof Rosenthal did not cover such matters in his lectures. The banned Tsvetayeva book had been brought from America by her father, who worked at the United Nations.

And then she herself became a student in the Faculty, following in the footsteps of Yelena, her elder sister. I was a four-storey-high Moscow lout who had earned his first money as a child doing odd jobs between excursions with my mum to the Conservatory, and graduated from a School for Working Youth. She had graduated from a specialist school and was living in accordance with the principles of classical literature. A tempestuous romance and immediately a devoted relationship. A trainee summer writing letters to each other. The slightly bitter smell of her sandalwood perfume, a student wedding in a one-roomed Khrushchev-era flat. A flower in my cap and a bottle of Moskovskaya vodka in a string bag with some black bread, such was the manner in
which the bridegroom collected his bride. Her diplomat family did not appreciate the humor. Afterwards, socialist poverty and the joy when a new life is created.

My son entered the world and my student friends congratulated me: “Well done! Now you’ll have someone to send out for beer in the morning.” Instead, I remember rushing round the chemists’ shops of Moscow looking for dill water to soothe colic.

Then, a daughter. Hurrah. She was called Vera.

Later, a nationalistically challenged moron of a schoolteacher with a straggly little beard gave my daughter a hard time in drawing lessons because of her surname, which he thought was Jewish. I wanted to treat him to a knuckle sandwich, Anna was sure that was the wrong approach and firmly protected the teacher’s teeth. Her more humane approach triumphed. We explained at length to Vera that the teacher was barking up the wrong tree, but she should not demean herself by putting him right, just grin and bear it.

Anna gained her degree. Of course, her dissertation was on Tsvetayeva, and brilliantly defended. The plume of our student romance dissipated and the outlines of our relationship were fine-tuned, both matrimonial and professional. My first TV assignment in Rustavi. The agony of my first script. That evening Anna read the children a story remembered from her own childhood about a brave little tin soldier, or from mine, about Little Gavroche in
Les Misérables
. Having put the children to bed, she came to help me out. “…  and thus the myth of seven-league boots came partly to be embodied in the idea of the internal combustion engine.” That was Anna writing about motorbike racing. It was terrible, but it was used in the broadcast. Years later we laughed at ourselves in the kitchen on Herzen Street.

By now the flat was ours, and we were joined by Solly Zeus Smile or, more simply, Martyn the Dobermann. He wasn’t at all Dobermannish. In our crazy flat we had a growing dog with a fearsome bark but as affectionate as a kitten. He had some doggy sixth sense for identifying (infrequent) enemies. When he was a year and a half old, Anna saved his life by giving him injections every two hours. My friends
offered to take the dog to the children’s hospital where they worked, insert a catheter in a vein, and save us a lot of trouble. Anna was appalled. “We really couldn’t do that. Alexander and I will take it in turns to get up.”

Relations with my mother were difficult. Of course, we had arguments, mainly about how to bring the children up. Dr Spock was Anna’s bible: “Teach them to swim before they can walk,” and all that. The main bone of contention was finding a good nursery. It was impossible to get the children into one. I was a junior editor at a sports publishing house. I got a job teaching Asian martial arts, but in the early 1980s all that sort of thing was banned. There was no money for winter boots. In the mornings I ran barefoot in the snow in the courtyard so my feet didn’t feel the cold on the way to work in Ostankino. The children followed behind me with their sniffles and coughs and upsets. Arguments.

After fairly wild evenings, I wrote in the kitchen at night. Anna herself very much wanted to write. Just 100 metres from where we lived were the offices of the railway union’s newspaper,
The Whistle
. She went in but returned in dismay. The director had suggested she should begin her article with the words, “How’s it going, railway worker?” You just can’t write like that! There were tears in the evenings at the grey web of everyday routine.