Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [39]
Buvadi said nothing, but I felt his solidarity. He too was fed up with guns, with the constant fear. He was terribly weary of never being parted from his weapon, sleeping in combat fatigues, and living in a house that resembled a barracks. They say it is when people grow weary that they die.
Part II: The Protagonists
CHECHNYA IS THE PRICE YOU PAY TO BE SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UN
May 21, 2001
The past week has brought striking evidence of how enthusiastically we have got stuck into bringing back the Brezhnev era.
The influential Human Rights Watch group timed publication of its report about just one of the hundreds of civilian mass graves in Chechnya to coincide with the arrival in Moscow of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in an attempt to demand support from the international community, and in particular, of course, from the United Nations, for a proper inquiry. A great barrage of irate Kremlin comment, refutation and repudiation ensued.
Why were the state authorities squirming so nervously on their chairs, as if someone had put drawing pins on them? Can Secretary-General Annan’s visit be seen as a drawing pin? And why, finally, did the UN’s top diplomat remain silent – disgracefully so for someone in his position – when at least some human sympathy was called for, and a few words, even if couched in diplomatic terms, at least referring to the need to rein in the ongoing war crimes in Chechnya?
There is no doubt that we have observed the conclusion of a business deal on a podium of human bones. It was the signing of a contract between two major players, the Kremlin and the most senior official of the United Nations. So why all the edginess? Why this nervous burst of commentary from Putin’s court liars? It was all perfectly logical: the Russian side was not completely sure it had the upper hand and was very concerned that in the wake of the Human Rights Watch report the deal might be called off at the last moment.
But first things first. Let us look at the main points of the report, a highly detailed, almost forensic document about a mass grave discovered in January–February this year not far from Grozny and just across the road from Khankala, the main Russian military base in Chechnya. A total of 51 bodies were unearthed, and the way the mass grave was identified is entirely typical. The information about the first of the bodies, that of Adam Chimayev who disappeared on December 3, 2000, was obtained by the Chimayev family after a commercial deal: the relatives paid an officer who had been guarding Adam while he was held at the military base the rouble equivalent of $3,000 for information about the location of the burial site. After payment had been made, the family was allowed to collect the body.
The news rapidly spread through Chechnya, and the relatives of other Chechens who had vanished without trace flooded into Dachnoye. As a result 19 bodies were identified, leaving 34 unidentified. On March 10, 2001, without warning, the unidentified bodies were reburied by military personnel, who failed to retain biological specimens as is required in such cases. In its report, Human Rights Watch cites numerous accounts by witnesses about the behaviour of the Prosecutor’s Office and the relevant Russian government and presidential institutions at that time. It characterises it as “unsatisfactory.”
In essence, the behaviour of the Russian authorities proved that they wanted no investigation of the mass grave; they flatly denied it was anything to do with military personnel. But the human rights activists have also put the international community on notice for turning a blind eye to the Dachnoye scandal. The USA, the European Union, the European Parliament and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in effect did everything they could to hush the story up. Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, who was flying on February 27–29 on an inspection tour of Chechnya immediately after the discovery of the graves, did not even visit Dachnoye to meet the