Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [187]
In Taronga, naturally, there are a lot of koalas. They look like little cuddly bears, almost completely grey, but with a beige shimmer, and they sleep 20 hours out of 24 in trees, according to the sign, in uncomfortable postures: the back of their furry neck pressed against one branch, their backside against another, and the rest of their body dangling down. They sleep sweetly, so that must be how they like to be. How important it is not to impose our own ideas of comfort on other people.
And then, of course, the kangaroos. How could one visit Australia without seeing a kangaroo? Unfortunately, the kangaroos seemed rather unfriendly. They were probably afraid. They would look at you, but very anxiously. You could go into their pen and they would hop alongside, not agile bipeds but on their two rear paws, and not too close. Along with the kangaroos, an insolent beauty lives in Taronga: the emu. She sashayed over and promptly pecked the back of my head, which was at just the right level, with a beak the size of a small shovel. She was clearly asking for food, but all the signs in Taronga shout: Do Not Feed The Animals! So we parted with the emu not on the best of terms.
The cockatoos in the Sydney zoo are very handsome, striking, multicolored, and friendly. They are almost the size of eagles, but the best cockatoos live on the Sydney central embankment, enormous, white with black patches, and move in flocks over short distances, from one of the enormous trees which surround the opera to another, kicking up a fuss among themselves, like our crows, and paying no attention at all to people.
Well, that is it. After the zoo I had to fly for 22 hours, for the most part over seas and oceans, with two stops, in Singapore and Dubai. In total it took over 24 hours to get back to Moscow. It wasn’t much fun, but I don’t regret it. To have been to the far end of the earth, which you always knew existed, is very invigorating and a good inoculation against the great-power mentality drummed into us in Russia. How can we be the epicenter of everything if you can fly for 24 hours from Moscow and still find there is more world to see?
9. The Last Pieces
Anna Politkovskaya’s last articles continued her protest against the brutality unleashed by Yeltsin and Putin when they agreed to reignite the Chechen War. In “A Pact Between Killers” she passes on to a wider audience a report she believed important and illuminating.
A PACT BETWEEN KILLERS
September 28, 2006
A conference was held recently in Stockholm devoted, amongst other things, to the problems of the North Caucasus. Political analysts, journalists and human rights activists were invited. We publish below excerpts from one of the papers read at the conference.
Vakha Ibrakhimov, Researcher, Chechnya:
A significant number of local people regard the actions of Chechen squads as far worse than what was typical of the federals before them. “Those were Russians, but these are our own people. How can they treat us like this?” Such is the half-rhetorical question I heard repeatedly. Even so, those critical of the Kadyrovites, people who hate them, would not want to go back three or four years to when the Republic was totally under the control of Russian soldiers and agents of the intelligence services.
Why? Simply because the members of pro-Moscow detachments, being themselves Chechen, do not treat other inhabitants of the Republic in a racist manner. Their enemies are not “all Chechens without exception,” and not even genuine separatists, but particular families and people with whom they have personal scores to settle. For a majority of Kadyrovites, Yamadayevites, Kakievites, and the followers of other warlords, the decision to fight on the side of the federal forces is not politically motivated but a convenient means of resolving their own problems with the backing of a state which ensures