The following is a rant with little editing or consideration.
No sooner had the news media reported on her abrupt kidnapping, did we hear of the discovery of the journalist and human rights advocate Natalia Estemirova’s body. I am told that the body was found with bullet wounds to the head and chest on a roadside outside of Nazran, Ingushetia, the neighboring region to Chechnya.
Estemirova was a pioneer journalist and member of the beleagured NGO Memorial, and those who worked with her are passionate in describing her commitment, courage, and vital importance as one of the last people still carrying on with the important work of documenting human rights abuses by both the state and paramilitary bodies against the civilian population of Chechnya. Her sudden kidnapping and murder is a most vile act, one that is almost unspeakable in its hideous brutality. Yet it is also a murder that we should not consider in isolation. There is a long history of tolerated attacks against journalists and human rights activists, and a climate for impunity and rule of law that holds no one accountable for this kind of crime. The message is clear and not undesirable for some elements of the government: those of courage who challenge the status quo may find themselves paying a high price.
Hearing this news, one may recall with acid-mouthed disgust the murderof the prominent human rights attorney Stanlislav Markelov, who wasshot dead on a snowy Moscow sidewalk, most likely in connection withhis work in Chechnya. The more appropriate memory is of course AnnaPolitkovskaya. On Oct. 5, 2007 Natalia Estemirova was awarded theinaugural Anna Politkovskaya journalism award for her investigativereporting on human rights, and the two had maintained a closefriendship. Here is a comment from Estemirova’s 2007 interview withRFE/RL after winning the prize:
“We have a lot of problems right now, most of allwith people who have found themselves in very difficult situations,”Estemirova says. “In Chechnya, there is a big problem with fabricatedcriminal cases and many young Chechen men are in prison in Russia underdifficult conditions. Can you imagine, since 2000 the authorities havebeen stirring things up so anybody with power thinks they can just beatChechens. Now there is a situation where many of them are imprisonedfor nothing, for crimes that were committed by others, crimes that theyhad no relation to. Now these cases need to be reexamined. This is workthat needs to be done by defense attorneys, and this work needs to bepaid for. This is what I want to spend this prize on.”
When Markelov was murdered, it took President Dmitry Medvedev a full nine days to give a response, and when he did it was out of the side of his mouth. Putin never said a word publicly about Markelov, but dismissed the murder of Politkovskaya, which took place on his birthday, by criticizing her as an insignificant journalist whose work meant nothing in the eyes of the government.
Considering that U.S. President Barack Obama just left Russia smiling and willing to believe in a reset of relations, while a Russian delegation then flew to Italy to play Summit games and act like a world leading power, my question is how long are we going to wait for the Kremlin to condemn and act upon this horrible murder? How much longer before we can connect the dots between all these events and see the reality of what is happening in Russia.
I recall a recent private meeting I held only a few weeks ago with a high ranking German official in the Bundestag. He told me, with some exasperation, “Every time that Russia behaves like this and does something outrageous, we in Germany are always asking ourselves what we did wrong to cause it.”
Isn’t it about time that we stopped manufacturing excuses for these kinds of events?
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15 Comments
Too bad we don’t see Robert Amsterdam weeping over the murdered children in Iraq. Are they less important than this woman? I smell BIG hypocrisy here.
Karl, the facts are that any civilian deaths in Iraq by the US military were unintentional. And, that any children intentionally murdered by rival terrorist groups operating in Iraq have been doggedly hunted down by the US military and the Iraqi government. But, you know all this. So, your lame moral equivalence of murdered children in Iraq given those those facts versus the intentionally murdered journalists/human rights workers in Russia where the perpetrator is never brought to justice as hypocrisy is bogus.I suspect you think your nose rather than your brain.
Penny:”Karl, the facts are that any civilian deaths in Iraq by the US military were unintentional.”LOL!!!! This is not true and you know it. The US bombed Baghdad and other big Iraqi cities for weeks during their illegal invasion. Thousands of Iraqi civilians died in these bombings.We also have news about demoralized American troops shooting civilians in their homes in a classic Vietnam style. And how about those prison camps like Abu Ghraib? Do the tortured Iraqis appreciate the democracy and freedom you claimed to “export” there?Quite the hypocrisy already. You invaded Iraq for oil and killed 1-2 million Iraqis in the process. That is a Nazi-style invasion and genocide. Shame on you, shame on you.
It is clear to me and other long time readers of RA blog why RA doesn’t write about the problems in Nigeria, Iraq children or about Michael Jackson but certain people just don’t get it.The situation in Russia is getting worse each day. Kremlin has already put the “best” detectives to investigate this murder (as they did with Politkovskaja). And the leader of the investigation is the murderer himself – Kadorov.
So bad..who will call Russia to order?
BOB:I appreciate your comments, but I think your headline has it absolutely backwards. This killing is not the price of courage, it’s the price of cowardice.What killed this marvelous woman was the cowardice of those inside and outside Russia who would not defend and protect her. Their silence killed her, just as it killed so many in the time of Stalin.President Obama recently visited Russia and instead of confronting Putin about this violence, he praised him as a pragmatist. Indeed, this “solution” is about as pragmatic as you can get, but the signal sent by the hapless American neophyte may well have green-lighted further killing.It’s time for you to point the finger of blame squarely at the people of Russia and the Western leaders who have betrayed their values.
ISQUIL:That is the stock and trade of our blog La Russophobe. There is no better place to find such efforts. We’d like to see much more effort of that kind here on this blog as well.
Sadly, Mr Amsterdam, because you, as a lawyer, have ostensibly compromised your objectivity regarding the Putin regime, having accepted Khordokovsky as your client, your words are easily dismissed by those who wish to defend such brutality.That is the problem of a lawyer claiming objectivity. Your “weakness” of standing, is a microcosm of the West’s weakness.Russia can easily argue that the West want to destabilise Russia for their uncentralised lust for capitalist lebensraum. This argument can be countered but never defeated. After all, there are greedy capitalists straining on their leash to exploit the Russian market – and who don’t really care too jots about human rights, unless it furthers their business plans.We in the West need to find an ethical form of capitalism. When we have that, our standing to claim objectivity and moral superiority will be much more effective.
Yet again civil society is witnessing how ruthless dictators deal with their critcs. Ms Estemirova’s murder is yet another chilling reminder of the perils faced by some journalists and Human Rights activists working in conflict zones around the world. By bringing hard hitting facts to the public arena they irrefutably place themselves in the sniper scope of their enemies. Tragically, this despicable crime against both Human Rights and Press Freedom is becoming an increasingly all too common occurrence across the globe. Nevertheless, many journalists remain undaunted in the face of such adversity and continue to run this gauntlet of reprisal in the pursuit of bringing crimes perpetrated against innocents to world attention.The perpetrators of this grotesque act of murder against the world of human rights must be brought to justice. By allowing these murders to go unpunished is setting a dangerous precedent for other dictatorships to follow!
Yet again civil society is witnessing how ruthless dictators deal with their critics. Ms Estemirova’s murder is yet another chilling reminder of the perils faced by some journalists and Human Rights activists working in conflict zones around the world. By bringing hard hitting facts to the public arena they irrefutably place themselves in the sniper scope of their enemies. Tragically, this despicable crime against both Human Rights and Press Freedom is becoming an increasingly all too common occurrence across the globe. Nevertheless, many journalists remain undaunted in the face of such adversity and continue to run this gauntlet of reprisal in the pursuit of bringing crimes perpetrated against innocents to world attention.The perpetrators of this grotesque act of murder against the world of human rights must be brought to justice. By allowing these murders to go unpunished is setting a dangerous precedent for other dictatorships to follow!
Karl,Please ask Americans to leave Iraq when Russians leave the Northern Caucasus, where they also conducted (and are conducting) genocide. Stop the hypocrisy already.
What is needed now: a high-profile website with the information Natalia Estemirova gathered, with the goal of exposing the people behind the human-rights abuses she investigated. The power of social media — and socially-conscious people all over the world — needs to be focused on this goal.
J.F.Melzian – Lütticher Str. 2 – D 13353 Berlin2009-9-30– COPY –To Mr OrlovMemorialMoscowRE: Strategical murdering and murder accusationsREF: TV euronews 08-9-26Sir,on TV I saw you pretendig to know why and by who Estemirova was killed. But it was just another repetition of your eternal accusations that your government (and you mean Putin and his envoys and/or helpers with that) is alledgedly responsible for the murders of burgherrightlers. As always, you presented no proof , your statement of an invented “fact” was again all you had.In this you were cooperating with others in the West, uttering more or less explicitly and loudly the same, always the same, allegations. What you saw and see as your job, is to repeat these western speech bubbles without valid content, so you are an agent of western claims to Russian government wickedness and the western claim, “because of this”, to getting a say in Russian home politics.I am in reality what you claim to be, a person concerned with the government crimes (g.c.) of his own country, New Gross West Doychland (NGWD), and I have a large selection of such g.c. cases, some of them done to me, to punish me for finding out about the others. In contrast to you, I am not an agent of foreign wordsmiths and accusationforgers, nobody supports and protects me. I am persecuted politically for 30 years now by the very system that you want to impose upon your country “in order to stop these murders, finally”, and no justice action ever brought justice in such cases to me or others: the German g.c. cut-throats are 100% protected by the German g.c. government of Kohl-Schroeder-Merkel (KoSchMer.DE), and not even insufficient research (as Mr. C
you are right on the money.she needs to be the focus for all human rights activists. the west, must link trade issues with human rights. stay tuned. m
you are right on the money.she needs to be the focus for all human rights activists. the west, must link trade issues with human rights. stay tuned. m