When the Chechen human rights worker Natalia Estemirova was snatched off the streets of Grozny and later deposited in a roadside ditch with a few bullets to the head, the grotesque brutality of the act was hard to swallow.  In response, not all the much was done.  In Russia, the event was not even a blip on the media radar, and mourners at her memorial were even harassed and arrested.  Outside of Russia, Estemirova was given generous and sympathetic treatment (here is a good example), but the sadness and outrage on the editorial pages did not translate into any concrete political action.

The costs of inaction on the renewed violence in Chechnya are very high, as this week we have reports of two activists working for a children’s charity who were kidnapped and killed in the same region.  Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband Alik Dzhabrailov worked for a group known as Save the Generation, which worked on rehabilitating orphans and other children who have suffered psychologically and physically from the war.  The fact that these two individuals innocuously worked with children, and were not even involved in personal attacks or damaging reports on the Chechen authorities, is particularly outstanding.  More than a few people we’ve talked to are already speculating that this murder spree could be part of a campaign to destabilize Ramzan Kadyrov, but it is hard to put any violence past someone with such a record.  What’s clear is that Moscow appears to lack the will and ability to put a stop to these killings or guarantee the safety of civil society, journalists, and much less citizens of Chechnya.

Excerpt from the Financial Times coverage after the cut.