Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [74]
SRRK has already climbed up on to the car’s running board. In the heat of directing the abduction he throws his arm forward, like Lenin on the armoured car at the Finland Station in 1917. “What is he doing on that 10?” those taking the video exclaim. Quite so, bigwigs in Chechnya drive around fast in armour-plated jeeps.
Scene 3 is in effect the “Bathhouse Video,” two stills from which were made public last week. The significant thing about this clip is what was not shown. After SRRK embraces the lady in the crimson bra, there is some incomprehensible action. SRRK several times releases the lady in red then draws her back to himself, laughing. The lady tries to dance as he talks to her in bad Russian, but then he shouts in Chechen to somebody off-camera, “Go on, take your trousers off!” Again, “Give him some shampoo [sic] so he takes his trousers off!” All this with much chortling. SRRK is enjoying himself, relaxed, unself-conscious.
Finally the scene becomes more comprehensible. SRRK wants his young lady to feast her eyes on someone off-camera who is lowering his trousers on SRRK’s orders. After that we see a harassed young man in a black baseball cap pulling down his trousers. He has either been beaten up or is mentally disturbed, or in a state of narcotic intoxication. He moves slowly, but obeys the orders.
SRRK on the other hand is clearly on a high. With joyful yelps he tears himself from the young lady and skips over to the other man in the baseball cap, by now with his mobile phone in hand, and starts photographing the lower part of the unfortunate man’s body. The young lady no longer figures, as the “cameraman” concentrates on SRRK squealing and enthusiastically continuing to video the personal attributes of the man in the baseball cap. SRRK is really enjoying himself. How? By photographing the extreme humiliation of someone who took his trousers down on his orders and is not even averting his face. Sex would have been preferable. This is sick.
The significant question, however, is who has decided to disseminate this material and why? Why right now? Who is the target audience?
Without the slightest doubt, those responsible were right by SRRK’s side, trusted bodyguards and soldiers, “brothers,” because nobody else could have done it. Or rather, they could, but they would have been killed as soon as it became evident that the videos had strayed beyond their own circle.
The Kadyrovites all own cutting-edge mobile phones, especially those in the upper reaches of the hierarchy, closest to the Big Man. They have plenty of easy money and this is how they amuse themselves. They video everything and everyone, but mainly themselves and their amours. I have seen it myself, and they have boasted to me about how cool their mobiles are, and how much better than mine.
Videoing criminal acts like the armoured car and the boot episodes is not, however, an occupation for anyone with ambitions to remain alive and stay close to the Boss in the future. It is time to speculate: who has allowed themselves this liberty?
Not long ago in Vedeno District several dozen Kadyrovites transferred their allegiance to the resistance fighters. This went almost completely unreported, but the fact of their defection is not denied even by Khankala, the generals at Regional Operational HQ who direct all the continuing monstrousness in the North Caucasus.
We may suppose that it is these renegade Kadyrovites who have been distributing compromising material they had been storing up. Did it help them to be accepted back into the ranks of the resistance fighters, which is where most Kadyrovites originate? Unlikely. The recordings are an incidental detail, and for now it is an open question why they were not killed when they attempted to return to their former colleagues.
Who is the video’s target audience? This is really the important question. Who is the intended “consumer” of the mobile phone recordings of SRRK? The Russian public? Nobody out there has had any