Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [6]
Dear Vitaliy,
See what they have been getting up to while we were trudging the tracks of Shatoy! They are saying we did it for money. Army Headquarters in Khankala claimed as much, and it doesn’t really matter whose vocal cords they used. You were running around in the mountains; gazing down on the murder scene in horror from a cliff, trying not to fall off; discussing for days who had killed whom and burned their bodies; having to face 28 orphans. That kind of work, according to Officer Shabalkin, has a dollar value.
Of course we have nothing to prove to each other, and could now just keep quiet. But you actually saw what happened at Dai and Nokhchi-Keloy, and on the road to Barzoy where the bodies of two soldiers and an officer whom the Shabalkins of this world have no interest in have been lying in the river for over two months. You know that this is not about dollars.
At first I was very angry and thought that if Shabalkin had been in our shoes he would have had a different tale to tell. Then I calmed down and started to feel sorry for the man. “They” in Khankala have a hard life: they have to run around like servants whose masters are in a bad mood in the morning because their boots haven’t been properly polished. It’s really not that easy to talk about places you have never been to and things you have never seen, and to make it look as if you are doing a great job and do know everything that’s going on. You and I would blow our brains out rather than jump through hoops like those but Shabalkin, poor sod, plods on. So we are more fortunate, having seen everything with our own eyes and not having to pretend. Although we are not happier when we think about what it is we have seen.
How are things in Shatoy? Have they given up sending helicopters from Khankala to catch wounded Khattabs? How is Victor Malchukov getting on, the Shatoy Military Commandant who long ago saw the reality of what is going on around him, a man with haunted eyes? It must be difficult for you. I have an easier time here in Moscow, deflecting the attacks of idiots. It’s a piece of cake by comparison with the mountains.
Anna Politkovskaya
Around me my family are grim-faced. I am flying out to Chechnya again, only I won’t be meeting up with Vitaliy. I have other plans.
THE SAGA OF ANNA’S ASSIGNMENT IN SHATOY
February 14, 2002
On January, 11 2002, in what Army Headquarters officially described as an operation to capture the Chechen resistance leader, Khattab, soldiers of the Central Intelligence Directorate (GRU) murdered and burned the bodies of six civilians. Anna went to investigate.
I take out the tape of my last assignment in Chechnya, and at the same time read through the newspapers and the news agency tapes.
Well, well. My colleagues seem to have been competing to see who could come up with the most unfounded stories. According to our esteemed Interfax news agency, I was detained on February 9, by the Shatoy District Military Commandant’s Office during a special operation there because I did not have the necessary documents. It seems to concern nobody that there was no special operation in Shatoy, either immediately before, on, or after February 9.
As I read on, the tone gets more caustic. It seems I escaped from the Commandant’s Office and disappeared, thereby discrediting … I should be punished just where it hurts … The Press Office of the Joint Military Command in Chechnya fulminates that by my misconduct I have brought disgrace upon all journalists.
What actually happened was that on February 8, the second day of my assignment, having made my way from Grozny to Shatoy, my first act, making no attempt at concealment, was to go directly to Sultan Mahomadov, the Director of the District Interior Affairs Office, and inform him of the purpose of my assignment: to investigate one of the most scandalous and tragic recent events in Chechnya, the extra-judicial execution and burning of the bodies of six civilians who were returning from Shatoy