Anna Politkovskaya: Life risked to speak the truth

Life risked to speak the truth
By ERIC MARGOLIS

CALGARY -- When I met Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2002 to discuss her new book about Chechnya, Dirty War, I began by asking her about life in Moscow.

She brusquely interrupted me, "Please, I am here to speak only of Chechnya."

The 48-year-old Russian journalist told me her days were numbered. She was murdered last week in Moscow.

At a time when too many journalists have become clapping seals for governments or their employer's party line, Politkovskaya risked her life to report the truth.

She exposed massive human rights violations and economic crimes being committed by Russian forces against independence-seeking Chechen people.

She was among a handful of Russian journalists who dared cover the brutal war in the Caucasus, fearlessly reporting it in her crusading newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, one of the last free voices in Russia's mostly government-controlled media.

But because of mounting death threats against her and her two children, Politkovskaya told me she had regretfully decided to seek political asylum in Austria. Since 1996, 23 Russian journalists have been murdered for reporting on Chechnya and domestic crimes.

But this hero journalist could not stay silent about the slaughter in Chechnya. She challenged head-on the news blackout Moscow imposed on this forgotten and largely invisible conflict.

I knew what she went through. While covering the 1980s war in Afghanistan, I learned the Soviets and Afghan Communists had put a contract out to kill me as part of their effort to stop Western journalists from reporting on the war.

Politkovskaya returned to Russia, and continued to cover Chechnya in spite of more death threats and an attempt to poison her. She was about to come out with a critical new book about Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin, and crimes being committed in Chechnya.

A contract killer murdered Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment. The consensus in Moscow points the finger of suspicion at Chechnya's Moscow-installed puppet ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, a brutal Chechen warlord.

Her murder was another sign that Russia is still dominated by its security organs and ruthless gangsters.

By now, Moscow has mostly crushed the life out of Chechnya's 1.5 million people. These tough Muslim mountaineers have battled Russian rule for 400 years. During the Second World War, Stalin attempted genocide by sending 60% of all Chechens to concentration camps.

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