8-30-58  - 10-7-2006

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist and human rights activist well known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and Russian president Putin.

She was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building on the birthday of Vladimir Putin, whom Alexander Litvinenko publicly accused of ordering her murder. Litvinenko subsequently died from poisoning by radioactive polonium.Politkovskaya made her name reporting from lawless Chechnya, where many journalists and humanitarian workers have been kidnapped or killed. She was arrested and subjected to mock execution by Russian military forces there, and she was poisoned on the way to Beslan, but survived and continued her reporting. She authored several books about Chechen wars and Putin's Russia and received numerous prestigious international awards for her work.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Russia is the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists over the past 15 years, behind only the conflict-ridden countries of Iraq and Algeria. A new report found that 42 journalists had been killed in Russia since 1992, many of them slain in contract-style executions, and the vast majority unsolved by Russian authorities.

Reports from Chechnya

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 .

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, which made them completely incapable for many months.

Criticism of Vladimir Putin and FSB

She wrote a book, Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy, critical of Putin's federal presidency, including his pursuit of the Second Chechen War. In this book she also accused the Russian secret service FSB of stifling all civil liberties in order to establish a Soviet-style dictatorship, but admitted that "it is we who are responsible for Putin's policies": "Society has shown limitless apathy... As the Chekists have become entrenched in power, we have let them see our fear, and thereby have only intensified their urge to treat us like cattle. The KGB respects only the strong. The weak it devours. We of all people ought to know that." She also wrote that: "We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial - whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit."

A Russian Diary

In May 2007, Random House published A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, made up of extracts from her notebook and other writing, in which she describes the poisoning on the plane to Rostov-on-Don on the way to Beslan and the worsening political situation in Russia .

Her relationships with Russian state authorities

"I will not go into the other joys of the path I have chosen, the poisoning, the arrests, the threats in letters and over the Internet, the telephoned death threats, the weekly summons to the prosecutor general's office to sign statements about practically every article I write (the first question being, "How and where did you obtain this information?"). Of course I don't like the constant derisive articles about me that appear in other newspapers and on Internet sites presenting me as the madwoman of Moscow. I find it disgusting to live this way. I would like a bit more understanding."

Assassination

Politkovskaya was found shot dead on Saturday, 7 October 2006 in the elevator of her apartment block in central Moscow. October, at 2:30 p.m. Before Politkovskaya was laid to rest, more than 1,000 people filed past her coffin to pay their last respects. Dozens of Politkovskaya's colleagues, public figures and admirers of her work gathered at a cemetery on the outskirts of Moscow for the funeral. No high-ranking Russian officials could be seen at the ceremony. There was widespread international reaction, and Russian state authorities were blamed by some of her colleagues and friends of inability to prevent her murder or even of involvement in her assassination.

Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of sanctioning the assassination of Politkovskaya and claimed that politician Irina Hakamada had warned Politkovskaya about threats to her life coming from the Russian government.  In that regard, Politkovskaya had asked Litvinenko for advice. He had recommended that she escape from Russia immediately. Hakamada denied Litvinenko's allegations that she had been under any specific threats, and said that she had warned Politkovskaya only in general terms more than a year earlier, and that Politkovskaya had blamed her and Mikhail Kasyanov for becoming the Kremlin's puppets.

On 10 October, 2,000 demonstrators called Putin a "murderer" during his visit to Dresden, Germany. Such accusations have been dismissed by Putin. He told reporters in Dresden: "This journalist was indeed a sharp critic of the present Russian authorities...the degree of her influence over political life in Russia was extremely insignificant. She was well-known in journalistic circles, among human rights activists, in the West. I repeat, her influence over political life in Russia was minimal.  “..In my opinion murdering such a person certainly does much greater damage from the authorities’ point of view, authorities that she strongly criticized, than her publications ever did. Moreover, we have reliable, consistent information that many people who are hiding from Russian justice have been harboring the idea that they will use somebody as a victim to create a wave of anti-Russian sentiment in the world.”

"People often tell me that I am a pessimist, that I don't believe in the strength of the Russian people, that I am obsessive in my opposition to Putin and see nothing beyond that," she opens an essay titled Am I Afraid?, finihing it - and the book - with the words: "If anybody thinks they can take comfort from the 'optimistic' forecast, let them do so. It is certainly the easier way, but it is the death sentence for our grandchildren."

Official Investigation

On August 28, 2007, Russia's Prosecutor-General had a meeting with Vladimir Putin and the FSB director, during which he made an official announcement that

"Our investigation has led us to conclude that only people living abroad could be interested in killing Politkovskaya," and that "Forces interested in de-stabilising the country, in stoking crisis...in discrediting the national leadership, provoking external pressure on the country, could be interested in this crime. Anna Politkovskaya knew who ordered her killing. She met him more than once."

“Anna Politkovskaya.” Wikipedia. 14 Sept. 2007.

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.15 Sept. 2007<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home>.

Browne, Jeffery. “Russian Human Rights Journalist Murdered in Moscow.” the Online News hour.  1996-2007.  MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. 15 Sept. 2007 <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec06/russia_10-09.html>.