Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [85]
Both Kadyrov Junior and his “team,” as it is now customary to call them, went out of their way to emphasise that the beauty contest was the brainchild of Ramzan. He is richer today than his father ever was, effectively an oligarch, wallowing in money and enjoying throwing it about, as the contest was to show.
After the jury had announced the name of the winner and many girls had been awarded cars, a celebratory dinner was held in a Gudermes restaurant. Kadyrov Junior and several dozen bodyguards arrived. The winners were commanded to dance for him and his entourage and, as the dancing continued, Kadyrov Junior ordered his bodyguards to throw banknotes at the young ladies, $100 and 1,000-rouble banknotes.
A reporter for Chechenskoye obshchestvo calculated that some US$30,000, including the rouble equivalents, ended up on the Olympus Restaurant’s marble floor. The young ladies duly picked up the money. When one of the competitors suddenly burst into tears, Ramzan arranged for her to be given a diamond-studded Chopard Swiss watch. The watch with all its diamonds materialised instantly in Gudermes, the tears were dried, and a watch bought with money extracted from the citizens of Chechnya was publicly thrown at the feet of another of their number.
The years will pass, all things will pass, and nobody will have any desire 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 had been tortured to death in Tsentoroy? How will they live with themselves? I cannot imagine.
PS. On the morning of May 31, Kadyrovites (who no longer officially exist, as they have been reassigned to the Interior Ministry) caught resistance fighters in the hill village of Nesterovskaya in Ingushetia. As reported by the Russian Interior Ministry Troops Press Office, “Brigands, pursued by members of the militia, crossed the border of Chechnya and Ingushetia and hid in house No. 91, taking hostage the people living there.”
In the house surrounded by the Kadyrovites live the Khaikharoyevs, the family of Field Commander Ruslan Khaikharoyev, a kidnapper killed in 1999. With the family was Ruslan’s 19-year-old son, Rizvan, who, as their neighbours testify, was not a resistance fighter. When the fighters wounded a militiaman, the Kadyrovites retreated, taking with them Rizvan Khaikharoyev. He was pushed into the boot of one of the vehicles, which they positioned opposite the house. They used it for cover and began a two-hour gun battle. When everything fell quiet, Rizvan was hauled out of the boot and one of the Kadyrovites fired a pistol at the back of his head; another finished him off with his assault rifle. The murder was committed in full view of the people of Nesterovskaya, an extra-judicial execution committed by men who are now officially counted as members of the Interior Ministry Troops of the Russian Federation.
THE KADYROVITES WILL BE BEATEN: FOR NOW, ONLY IN INGUSHETIA
September 11, 2006
On September 7, a huge fight broke out at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Alkhasty on the Chechnya–Ingushetia border. Men in military fatigues approaching from the Chechen side and claiming to be the security detail of Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov became impatient at the “cheek” of the checkpoint guards. These were Ingush Interior Ministry troops of the regiment guarding the administrative border, and they demanded to see the documents, military orders, and other forms required for taking firearms across the border. The Kadyrovites started waving their arms about and firing in the air.
Three militiamen were injured as a result, two of whom are in hospital. The Kadyrovites proceeded to cross the border without