Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [217]
In her article, “Ramzan Kadyrov, the Pride of Chechnya” (Novaya gazeta, No. 42, June 5, 2006), Anna proved that the A. Kadyrov Foundation obtained its funds in the main by extortion from the Chechen people. Anybody who refused to pay up was, at best, sacked. As a result of his legalised extortion racket, Kadyrov Junior became the richest man in Chechnya. He and his retinue now drive around in flashy foreign cars, build themselves palaces in Chechnya and beyond its borders, and buy expensive flats in Moscow.
Anna explained how journalists working on Kadyrov’s image were generating a myth in Chechnya to the effect that the Republic’s restoration was taking place at the expense of Ramzan Kadyrov personally and of his Foundation. She showed that of 27 projects, only six were being financed by non-budgetary resources. The other projects, amounting to billions, were being financed from the budget of the Russian Federation.
Having in spring 2000 become Prime Minister in the Chechen government, Ramzan Kadyrov was sucking at the breasts of two mothers, the Russian federal budget and his own Foundation’s proceeds of crime.
Describing the Chechen beauty competition held at the Foundation’s expense, Anna wrote, “After the jury had announced the name of the winner and many girls had been given cars, there was a celebratory dinner in a Gudermes restaurant. Kadyrov Junior and several dozen bodyguards arrived. The winners were commanded to dance for him and the others and, as the dancing continued, Kadyrov Junior ordered bodyguards who were not dancing to throw banknotes at the young ladies, hundred-dollar and thousand-rouble banknotes […]
“Years will pass, all things will pass, and people will have no wish to recall any detail of these Hundred Days with their oaths of loyalty to the Kadyrov cause. But what of the girls who in May 2006 crawled around on that restaurant floor? What of the young journalists who put their signatures to a publication titled ‘Kadyrov, the Peacemaker,’ at a time when hundreds of people had been tortured to death in Tsentoroy? How will they live with themselves? I cannot imagine.”
The mafia does not forgive such exposés.
I Remember, Anna and I were Talking … Galina Mursalieva, Columnist for Novaya gazeta
I remember Anna and I were talking about the heroes of our times. There had just been two tragic incidents: Private Andrey Sychev had been brutally mutilated in the Army, and another 20-year-old in Moscow, Alexander Koptsev, had himself done the mutilating when he took a knife into a synagogue and wounded those at prayer. Anna very scrupulously investigated the circumstances of the first tragedy, and I examined the highly dramatic fate of the second young man. Together we identified a phenomenon: she told me that money was being sent from different parts of the country to the mother of Private Sychev, and I told her that money was also being sent to the mother of Koptsev. She was extremely interested by this twist. People who knew her well remember her ability to home in on the essence of her topics, to empathise her way into them. You could almost feel it physically. Her whole being leaning forward, slightly hunched, one hand propping up her chin and the other at her brow like the peak of a cap – that is how she looked as she sat at her desk, thinking and concentrating.
“So those are the new heroes Russia has chosen,” she said.
“I suppose so,” I agreed. “If you discount the glitz, the gossip column celebrities, the show business personalities, then in effect we are left with just these two boys, symbolising two of Russia’s horrors: the reign of the ‘grandads’ in the Army, and xenophobia. The popular mind seems to have no room for any other heroes.”
Anna thought for a moment, and then said abruptly, “In other words, we