TWO YEARS WITHOUT ANNA
By Nina Ognianova
CPJ Press Freedom Online
October 7, 2008 2:58 PM ET
NY
Anna Politkovskaya (Novaya Gazeta)I met Anna Politkovskaya in person
only once, in 2005. She was in New York to collect yet another
journalism award, and stopped by CPJ one October afternoon.
I remember her crossing the lobby with an even, determined step. She
had an urgency about her–that rare focus that comes only with absolute
clarity about one’s mission in life. Politkovskaya’s passion was
almost tangible–neither her low voice nor her poised delivery could
camouflage it. It radiated from her whole being–her hand gestures;
her steady gaze; the way she tossed back her strikingly gray hair.
She was not one for small talk–she did not care about my ice-breaker
about the weather. Neither did she wish to tell me about this new prize
she was about to receive. She went straight to the point–the human
rights crisis in Russia’s North Caucasus. She talked about the abuses
she had witnessed and reported on for years; of the war in Chechnya,
which she felt many Russians chose to pretend did not exist.
She talked about the aftermath of the 2002 Moscow theater siege, in
which 129 hostages died–all but two as a result of a botched rescue
operation. She talked about the 2004 school hostage crisis in Beslan,
where 330 people–mostly children–were killed when troops stormed
the building. She spoke of the many questions that these tragedies
had left unanswered–questions authorities hated her for asking. She
lamented that the number of reporters who would ask those questions was
diminishing. "There is so much to write about Beslan," she told me,
"but it gets more and more difficult when all the journalists are
forced to leave."
Politkovskaya did not talk about her own brushes with danger, the
numerous cases of harassment and intimidation she had endured at the
hands of federal and local security agents–the mock execution in
detention, the three days she spent in a pit without food or water
in Chechnya, the poisoning en route to Beslan …. She deflected all
my attempts to shift the conversation to her own experience.
She had come to talk about her colleagues and their plight. She had
come to be their voice. And so we talked about her friend at a small
newspaper in North Ossetia, who struggled to report on the aftermath
of Beslan but was refused access every step of the way. She talked of
her colleague in Nizhny Novgorod, who had been charged with inciting
ethnic hatred because he had printed a Chechen rebel’s statement in
his publication. She talked about the soldiers’ mothers who had come
to Novaya Gazeta to seek help because they had no one else to turn to.
(Novaya Gazeta)In a first-person piece, one year before she was
gunned down in the elevator of her Moscow apartment, Politkovskaya
tried to make sense of the reasons why the Kremlin had branded her
"a pariah." She asked: "So what is the crime that has earned me
this label of not being ‘one of us’? I have merely reported what
I have witnessed, no more than that." She continued: "I am not an
investigating magistrate but somebody who describes the life around
us 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. People know very
little about life in other parts of their own country, and sometimes
even in their own region.
The Kremlin responds by trying to block my access to information,
its ideologues supposing that this is the best way to make my writing
ineffectual. It is impossible, however, to stop someone fanatically
dedicated to this profession of reporting the world around us."
Today, as our colleagues from Novaya Gazeta gather on Novopushkinsky
Square in Moscow to honor Anna’s memory, we at CPJ stand with them
in solidarity. We remember Anna for her courageous journalism, her
compassion for those without voice, her dogged pursuit of truth,
and the humanity she preserved against all odds.
_______________
Memories of Anna:
Dmitry Muratov, Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief and 2007 recipient of
CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award:
About Politkovskaya one can talk without end. … Our mutual
existence could be characterized as a constant conflict. Mind you,
these conflicts were only professional, work-related. We never had any
personal battles. Our relations were friendly and good-natured. But
we constantly we had work-related conflicts. …
I’d tell her: "That would be all! You have to leave Chechnya
already. Enough!" … And she’d tell me: "You know, you are probably
right. But I cannot leave the weak without my help." And this was
the key quality about Politkovskaya–Politkovskaya was always on the
side of the defenseless. And Politkovskaya always criticized those
powerful with passion, fervor, and strong arguments. Thanks to her
articles, many were released from prisons; some who had been abducted
in Chechnya were recovered; elderly people were rescued from harm and
given assistance. … She defended the weak with all her ferocity,
and with all her mighty temperament. She heeded absolutely nothing–not
a single warning.
Yevgeniya Albats, deputy editor of the independent newsweekly The
New Times:
My memories are very personal: We were friends with Anya when we both
studied at Moscow State University, in the journalism department. I
won’t write about that here. I’ll just say one thing:
The last time Anya and I saw each other was at the first conference of
the Other Russia [opposition coalition], in the summer of 2006, where
we both spoke. We talked a lot between the sessions–about our kids,
of course. Well, what else could two 48-year-old women who have known
one another all their lives talk about? Anya told me that her daughter,
Verochka, was to give her a granddaughter the next February. And I
remembered Verochka when she was in a stroller. We talked about our
problems with the kids, about how each of us managed those problems
or–quite more often–didn’t.
We also talked about politics. And then she, just like that,
half-jokingly, said: "I know it is not my fate to die in bed, of old
age." Just like that, out of the blue.
The next time I saw her was by the entrance of her apartment house;
she was on a stretcher, covered with a white sheet.
Aleksei Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation in
Moscow:
Anna was a very beautiful woman. Even her gray hair made her look
beautiful. She had an air of unattainability about her. And, one day,
all that was shattered into pieces, smashed by some nasty, heavy boots.
To hell with her killers!
Sergei Buntman, deputy editor-in-chief of the independent radio
station Ekho Moskvy. (This commentary first appeared on Ekho Moskvy’s
Web site.)
Three months after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, Hrant Dink,
editor of the Armenian newspaper Agos, was killed in Turkey. Turkey is
a country that, like us, cannot come to peace with its past. Dink, by
bringing up the painful topic of the 1915 genocide, had earned himself
a conditional prison term on charges of insulting the Turkish people.
But right after he was murdered, the Turkish government did not wait
for special invitations, for questions asked at press conferences
abroad; it did not utter cynical formulations, but simply said that
a bullet in Hrant Dink was a bullet in the heart of Turkey.
Tens of thousands of people came into the streets, wearing badges that
said: "I am an Armenian." Of course, not everyone agreed with that. But
some of the biggest newspapers published headlines that said: "We
are all Hrant Dinks," and "Hrant Dink–this is Turkey."All right, so
perhaps Turks are southern people, emotional, prone to hyperbole. Can
we say, like them, "We are all Anna Politkovskayas"? We can’t. We must
do a hundred times more to even begin to accomplish all that she did
for our society and our freedoms, for compassion and for justice. But
we can say: "Anna Politkovskaya–this is Russia." Particularly if we
want our country to be as she was–one with the victims, not with
their executioners. If we want this to be true, we must fight for
it. We alone must do this. Because Anya is no longer here to do our
job for us.