Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [65]
Nikitin understands perfectly. He sighs and parries with “It is all the fault of the media.” In fact, it was none other Sergey Fridinsky, the Deputy Prosecutor-General of Russia for the Southern Federal Region and Nikitin’s immediate boss, who announced the names of the alleged bombers before anything was known for certain. Nikitin declines to comment on this and refers me “upstairs.” Needless to say, “upstairs” the officials in the Chechen Prosecutor’s Office are in no hurry to comment on their own murderously irresponsible utterances.
Back in Bachi-Yurt. Zina Dautkhadzhieva, the mother of the executed Liza, also has very little to add. She is terribly afraid of saying something she might regret, something which might prove fatal for some of her other children.
“You have to understand, the Kadyrovites are everywhere, and to declare a blood feud on Kadyrov today is …” The Bachi-Yurt villagers try to explain the situation but can’t.
“Is what?”
“It is to take on too much. It is a death sentence. That’s the way life is here.”
It seems there is nobody capable of protecting them, neither the Prosecutor’s Office, nor President Putin, nor the United Nations.
Edilov and Salmaniev went away, and because their accusations seemed so preposterous, so completely at odds with all the rules and customs, the men remained at home. Nobody went off to hide, as is traditional when somebody declares a blood feud or is preparing to do so. In those circumstances the men at risk do not sleep at home. They all stayed, and on the night of May 17 were executed: two of Aimani’s sons, Khanpash and Movsar Visayev; Aimani’s brother, Said Mahomed Ablayev; and Shakhidat, their niece.
Why? Because this has now almost become a custom. The Kadyrovites can do anything they please, even things forbidden by tradition. They live as if there will be no tomorrow, despising the laws, written and unwritten. If Ramzan wants land in Gudermes for his petrol station, he takes it without even bothering to inform the Ministry of Education to whom the teacher training institute standing on that land belongs.
So now instead of the Gudermes teacher training institute there is Ramzan’s petrol station. That is how it is with business, where money is involved; but the same thing applies to blood, to the torrents of it shed at the hands of the Kadyrovites. For they are in charge of this blood-letting; everybody in Chechnya knows that if you need to take revenge on someone for spilling blood, you go to work in Ramzan’s division. You will be welcomed and given weapons and their blessing to exact retribution. The Kadyrovs are in the business of setting everybody against everybody else. What for? In order to consolidate their own power. Where there is no order, there remains only blood and fear to secure the base of your throne.
BALLOT BOXES OR FUNERAL URNS?
August 25, 2003
Power struggles are never noble or fine, but the power struggle in Chechnya, taking place against the backdrop of a war now in its fifth year, is as nauseating as a reusable traitor.
Ibrahim looks like a pirate. Scars are healing under his hair and his eyes are hidden behind dark glasses. He was hurt very badly. He limps clumsily, his weight falling heavily first on one leg then on the other, a common sign here of someone beaten on the kidneys. Ibrahim Garsiev, the 36-year-old father of a family, is from Tangi Chu. He is a bodyguard of Rustam Saidullayev, the brother of opposition politician Malik Saidulayev.
On August 7 he was driving from home through the Urus Martan District when he was stopped by “unidentified masked individuals wearing combat fatigues,” the usual Chechen story. They disarmed him, took him to the district militia station, and started interrogating him.
“They wanted me to confess to blowing up a military water tanker in Tangi Chu and killing Batalov, the Head of the District Office for Combating Organised Crime,” Ibrahim relates. “But that was just for show. The Head of