Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [91]
Dear Boris Vyacheslavovich,
In Novaya gazeta, No. 65 we published Anna Politkovskaya’s article “The Disappeared,” which describes atrocities committed by certain members of the militia in Chechnya. Following publication, threats, signed in the name of one of those featured in the article, began arriving at Novaya gazeta by e-mail.
Journalists working for Novaya gazeta are increasingly being subjected to criminal violence: in May 2000, Igor Domnikov was murdered; and in December 2000, Oleg Luriye was brutally attacked. The perpetrators remain at large. This persuades me that these threats should be taken seriously and might be carried out. In my view, the life and well-being of Anna Politkovskaya are seriously at risk.
I request that you take all the measures required by law to identify and detain the guilty parties and to prevent the committing of a crime against a journalist.
Yours sincerely,
Yu.P. Shchekochikhin
Deputy Chairman,
Security Committee of the State Duma
[Deputy Editor of Novaya gazeta]
October 15, 2001
Enclosures: 5 pages
SILENCING THE WITNESSES: WHY THE KHANTY-MANSIYSK COMBINED MILITIA UNIT IS RETURNING TO CHECHNYA
March 11, 2002
In this issue of Novaya gazeta we should have been publishing an entirely different report from Chechnya, continuing the chronicle of one of the most appalling security sweeps of 2002 in Starye Atagi. We are obliged to postpone it until next Monday, in order today to describe events which, if we were to delay reporting them, might lead to fatalities.
As time passes one has the ever more insistent impression that there are several parallel states functioning simultaneously within Russia, and that they are at loggerheads. Moreover, even within the bounds of a single security ministry we find different state systems coexisting which not only have different tasks and aims, but completely dissimilar constitutions. The result is one tragedy after another when one system protects a person, while another, in retaliation, sets about him.
You will recall that more than a year ago the Khanties were on the rampage in Grozny. That is how the soldiers of the Khanty-Mansiysk Combined Militia Unit were known, many of whom served in the October District Temporary Interior Ministry Office in Grozny. Today these temporary district offices are a real thorn in the flesh of Chechnya. The permanent district offices are staffed by local militiamen, but those in the Temporary Office have been seconded to Chechnya from all parts of the country, usually for a 90-day tour of duty in accordance with a plan drawn up in Moscow.
For a long time the October Temporary Office was one of the most feared places in Grozny, and it has featured in Novaya gazeta on more than one occasion. Were there any men in charge of the Interior Ministry groups in Chechnya with the courage to try to stop the criminal brutality of the Khanties? Some fatherly commander sitting in Khankala with responsibility for restoring the system of law enforcement in the Republic, part of which, according to the plan, was the October District Office?
No. Not one. There were plenty of generals, but no courageous men of that kind. Even the Prosecutors were reluctant to investigate the goings-on at the October District Office, fearing the Khanties just as much as anyone else living in Chechnya.
March 6, 2002, Grozny. The spring is unseasonably warm. Even the lilac buds have opened and smile out at the people of Grozny who have shivered through the winter. Yet Rukiyat Murdalova weeps quietly in despair. We are driving through Minutka, the square in the center of this ruined city where, on January 2, 2001, the Khanties seized Zelimkhan, Rukiyat’s 26-year-old son, bundled him into a car, in the process brutally beating up two women (one of them a 73-year-old grandmother), who tried to protect a boy who was simply walking down the street. Both women are today witnesses against the Khanties, and this is an important detail in our story.
Zelimkhan was taken to the October Temporary Office. As has now been proven by the investigation