Date: October 7th 2007

Source: Reuters

Location: Moscow

Subject: Security Tight as Slain Kremlin Critic Remembered

News link: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0758126420071007

Police clamped tight security on Moscow on Sunday for protests remembering murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya and ahead of a Kremlin birthday party for President Vladimir Putin, whose policies she criticized.

Up to 2,000 people, many holding carnations and pictures of the reporter, attended a somber rally in Pushkin Square under rainy, cold skies to mark the anniversary of her death.

"We should fight for freedom," the editor of Politkovskaya's newspaper Dmitry Muratov told the crowd, which also included members of the "Other Russia" dissident group.

"We should keep Anna in our hearts and we should not follow the instructions of Putin".

Hundreds of extra police, some on horseback, patrolled nearby while vanloads of additional officers waited in side streets but no trouble was reported. Local media said 2,500 extra police had been drafted in.

Colleagues had gathered earlier for a private graveside remembrance of the reporter, a mother of two who was gunned down in the lift of her apartment building as she returned home from shopping. No one has yet been convicted of her murder.

A handful of others, including ex-world chess champion Garry Kasparov, now an opposition politician, laid flowers at the entrance to her apartment building in Moscow.

State-run television reported the anniversary briefly, showing pictures of an empty street outside Politkovskaya's apartment building with a few red flowers in a bucket.

Frustrated at the poor turnout, Kasparov told Reuters that Russians were "too passive" and didn't understand the significance of Politkovskaya's murder.

"Today is the official celebration of Putin's birthday but in a few years people will remember this day more for the death of Anna," he said.

KREMLIN PARTY

Putin, who enjoys strong support among Russians, was due to host a birthday reception in the Kremlin, his last as president before he steps down next March, possibly to become prime minister.

The Russian leader cut short his attendance at a meeting of leaders of former Soviet states in Tajikistan on Saturday so he could throw the party for top military officials and friends.

Leaders of Nashi, the largest pro-Kremlin youth organization were organizing a big riverside outdoor party to mark Putin's 55th birthday.

Putin drew fire in the aftermath of Politkovskaya's death for describing her influence as "minimal" but later praised her critical writing as an important contribution to public life.

Few Russians, who receive their news from mostly state- controlled media, were aware of Politkovskaya's work and attendance at commemorative events after her death was not high.

Many supporters have condemned the incomplete police inquiry into her death.

Prosecutors announced the arrest of 11 suspects in August but some were later released for lack of evidence and the chief investigator on the case was sidelined amid accusations of political interference.

Russia's human rights commissioner Vladimir Lukin said a final solution of the murder case was "of crucial importance for the public and the state".

"Establishing the names of the organizers of the murder is the key thing, which has yet to be done," he said on Sunday, Interfax news agency reported.

Prosecutors say the crime was masterminded by anti-Kremlin forces abroad whose aim was to discredit Russia but have not produced any evidence of this.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wrote to Putin last week questioning aspects of the official investigation into Politkovskaya's death and urging a "thorough, transparent and unbiased" probe.

Date: October 7th 2007

Source: Deutsche Welle (Cornelia Rabitz)

Location: Germany

Subject: An Attack on Basic Democratic Rights in Russia

News link: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2809931,00.html

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot one year ago. The failure to solve her murder shows that the country is still far from being a democracy with an independent judiciary, says DW's Cornelia Rabitz.

She denounced corruption and abuse of power. She relentlessly reported on murders, kidnappings and torture in Chechnya. She was tough on Kremlin politics. She never shied away from personal risks. She was incorruptible, investigative, courageous.

Anna Politkovskaya unsettled and disturbed people. Through her reporting, she made friends and gained respect and recognition, but she also made bitter enemies. She's become a role model for all those who see journalism as having moral, democratic and educational qualities. She became an enemy figure for all the people she criticized.

Anna Politkovskaya was murdered a year ago on Oct. 7 and became a victim of her profession and her moral-political self-image. No one knows to this day who was behind the murder, who commissioned it, and who fired the fatal shots in the end.

Only few in Putin's empire were courageous enough to support the journalist during her lifetime. Only few really showed any interest in her work. Too few. Soon after the murder, the Russian president -- during a visit to Germany, by the way -- said that Politkovskaya was an insignificant person without any influence. Still, she had obviously become a thorn in the side of official Russia.

Even if no one can prove an immediate complicity of the political leadership and especially Vladimir Putin himself -- the murder of the incorruptible Anna Politkovskaya was only possible in an atmosphere of utter contempt for democratic principles, for fairness and open societal debates.

A critical journalist must prove prickly in an environment where democracy has degenerated into a superficial spectacle, where free media, parties and institutions are nothing but set design for the scheming of secret services and the intrigues of insular, elite circles. On top of it all, her political enemies were additionally angered by the fact that her international reputation kept prompting the West to criticize Russia.

That's why today, one year later, the murder of the upright journalist still has a huge symbolic power. It was an attack on basic democratic rights. It was probably a decisive slap in the face of already curtailed freedoms of press and opinion. It unveiled Russia's ugly side.

The fact that there's still no real breakthrough in the investigation, but rather a hopeless mess of extenuations, spectacular arrests, judicial mistakes and dropped indictments shows only one thing: Russia still has to prove that it is a democracy with an independent judiciary.

Date: October 7th 2007

Source: The Guardian

Location: Paris / London (Robert Menard)

Subject: Keeping Hope Alive

News link: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/robert_mnard/2007/10/keeping_hope_alive.html

It is a year ago today since the threats hanging over Russian opposition journalist Anna Politkovskaya were finally enacted. A year has gone by and we still don't know who pulled the trigger, who organised her shocking murder and, most important, who ordered it.

Recent developments in the investigation and contradictory statements by the judges in charge of the case have given the impression of a judicial system that is far from independent. Arrests followed by releases and appointments accompanied by dismissals have cloaked the case in a distracting dustcloud that has yet to settle.

Confusion has reigned since prosecutor-general Yuri Chaika announced the arrest of 10 suspects on August 27. The head of the Russian commission created especially to investigate the murder, Alexandre Bastrykin, said on October 2 that six scenarios were being considered and that a former administrator of a Chechen district had been identified as one of those who helped organise the murder. He none the less acknowledged that discovering who ordered it would be much harder.

We agree with him. The failure to punish those who murder journalists is one of our biggest worries in Russia. Our concern is all the greater because the prosecutor general has claimed that persons based "outside Russia" who wanted to "destabilise the country" were behind Politkovskaya's murder. He was clearly alluding to well-known opponents of President Putin in exile in London, so often blamed for all the country's problems.

This is why we would like a trial to start as soon as possible, to thwart the disinformation. Like the staff of Novaya Gazeta, we see a threat in the leaks of the past few weeks, including the publication in Tvoy Den of the identity of 11 people who have been arrested. Members of the security services have been charged in connection with this case and more arrests may be on the way.

There is reason to fear that these suspects enjoy support within the judicial apparatus. Any reports that they are about to be charged could enable them to escape. The twists and turns after the arrest of federal security service member Pavel Ryaguzov, which a military court could not confirm for nearly two weeks, also fuel fears that the Politkovskaya murder will never be fully solved. We also regret that chief investigator Piotr Garibian has been taken off the case, as his work was hailed by Politkovskaya's family and colleagues and there were no grounds for his removal.

In the run up to this sad anniversary and in the light of these problems, we have often been asked if Politkovskaya's death served any purpose? Did Novaya Gazeta's reporter die in vain? Only if we think that the future of our societies is beyond our control, that we are powerless to change their course.

We do not think that. History, especially European history, shows us the greatness of resistance and revolt.

Politkovskaya believed in the possibility of a democratic Russia. She did not yield to the fatalism that insists that, since Russians have only known authoritarianism, they will not be able to free themselves from it. Politkovskaya waged her battle in Chechnya against the despair that threatens to contaminate all of Russia. She fought to prevent barbarity from spreading to the whole of society. Her execution on October 7 2006 outside her apartment on Lesnaya Street in Moscow has resounded like a warning shot for all her fellow-journalists in Russia.

It falls to us now to honour her commitment by supporting Russia's press freedom activists. All the different voices must be able to express themselves. We must not abandon them to their fate.

Date: October 7th 2007

Source: The Independent on Sunday

Location: Moscow

Subject: Threats Made Against Politkovskaya Colleagues

News link: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article3033356.ece

One year on from the murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, reporters from the same newspaper have revealed they have received threats after conducting their own investigation into the unsolved killing.

Although arrests have been made in connection with the murder, the person who ordered the killing has not been apprehended. The editor of Novaya Gazeta, where Ms Politkovskaya's hard-hitting reports were published, revealed that journalists have received threats after making inquiries into their colleague's death. "One guy received a text message to his mobile from an anonymous number," said Dmitry Muratov. "All that was written there was his full home address, which nobody even in the office knew."

Working at Novaya Gazeta, one of the few remaining Russian media outlets openly to criticise the Kremlin and investigate corruption, is not a safe occupation. Its former deputy editor, Yury Shchekochikhin, died from an apparent poisoning in 2003. The killers were never found, and critics say there was never a proper investigation.

In late August, the Russian prosecutor general, Yury Chaika, announced that Ms Politkovskaya had been murdered by a Chechen gang, with help from rogue interior ministry and security services operatives. Shamil Burayev, formerly the head of an administrative district in Chechnya, was arrested.

The mastermind, said Mr Chaika, was probably someone living abroad and seeking to destabilise Russia. Most people took this to be a reference to Boris Berezovsky, who is exiled in London. The staff of Novaya Gazeta were furious that the prosecutor had come out with unsubstantiated allegations in the middle of the investigation, and suspected the hand of the Kremlin in the announcement.

More recently, the head of the official investigation team seemed to backtrack somewhat, stating only that a mastermind abroad was "one possible version" of the killing. "This kind of crime involves a long chain with many links," said Alexander Bastyrkin at a press conference this week. "Finding the person who ordered it is very difficult." He added that there were "six possible versions" of the crime, which were being thoroughly investigated.

"I have full confidence in the investigation team," said Mr Muratov. "But we're worried that there may be political pressure on the prosecutor general." He expressed doubt that Mr Berezovsky was behind the killing, suggesting that this fitted into a Kremlin tactic of blaming all Russia's woes on President Putin's former political benefactor. "It's already getting a bit tedious to hold Berezovsky responsible for everything bad that happens," said Mr Muratov. "We believe that the person who ordered the killing is within the Russian Federation."

Novaya Gazeta reactivated Ms Politkovskaya's mobile phone number on Monday. "Hundreds of people shared information with her on this number," said a statement on the newspaper's website. "She was threatened on this number. And many people called her on this number as their last resort." The paper invited all those whom she had helped, or who had simply been moved by her reports, to call and share their memories of the murdered journalist.

It plans to release a special edition on Monday containing all the messages.

Date: October 7th 2007

Source: Interfax

Location: Moscow

Subject: Rally in Memory of Anna Politkovskaya

News link: http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=11881837

A rally, held in Moscow's Novopushkinsky Square on Sunday, adopted a resolution urging the authorities to track down and bring to justice the perpetrators of the murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya and of other politicians and journalists.

The resolution was read out by leader of the Russian People's Democratic Union Mikhail Kasyanov. The rally demanded that a fight against corruption be launched, and that the law on combating extremism be repealed as an anti-constitutional law.

The demonstrators also want October 7 to be declared the Day of Civil Dignity commemorating Anna Politkovskaya, killed a year ago.

After the rally, Kasyanov and other participants proceeded by metro to the place where Politkovskaya lived for a flower-laying ceremony.

No breaches of the peace were reported during the rally, Moscow police told Interfax.

Date: October 5th 2007

Source: The Moscow Times (Christopher Walker and Robert Orttung)

Location: Moscow

Subject: Democracy's Facade

News link: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/10/05/006.html

One could have hoped that Anna Politkovskaya's brutal murder and the international condemnation that followed would have set Russia's besieged press environment on a different course. With hindsight, however, her death represented a harbinger of more repression to come. Since she was killed Oct. 7, the crackdown on Russian news media has proceeded unabated and, if anything, with even greater ferocity.

The assault on the media has gained momentum in the lead up to the December parliamentary and March presidential elections, which will define the country's leadership succession. These elections are tightly controlled enterprises, and the Kremlin is not leaving anything to chance. Democracy in Russia is more a facade than a reality, and a premium is placed on "managed transfer" of power. In this system of governance, media are a pivotal instrument of control and this explains, at least in part, why the Kremlin continues to tighten its grip.

In the time since Politkovskaya was killed, the authorities have applied a full range of methods -- regulatory, economic, judicial, as well as harassment and intimidation -- to strengthen their media dominance.

On the legislative front, the Kremlin has pushed through amendments to broaden the law on extremism. This month, provisions will take force expanding the definition of extremism to include public discussion of such activity, and they will give law enforcement officials broad authority to suspend media outlets that do not comply with the new restrictions. These amendments come on the heels of a law President Vladimir Putin signed in July 2006 that expanded the definition of extremist activity to grant the authorities virtually unchecked power against critics.

The authorities shut down the Educated Media Foundation, the Russian affiliate of Internews, a respected, global media nongovernmental organization that provides training and support to journalists and news organizations. The Educated Media Foundation suspended its work following a raid in April on its Moscow headquarters. Police seized financial documents and computer servers as part of a supposed criminal investigation of the organization's president, Manana Aslamazian, in connection with her failure to declare cash she brought into the country.

Physical intimidation and murder remain constants feature of Russia's media landscape. In March, just five months after Politkovskaya's murder, Ivan Safronov, a defense correspondent for Kommersant, plunged to his death from his apartment building in Moscow and became the latest journalist to die under unclear circumstances. He reported last year on the failed test launches of Russia's latest submarine-based nuclear missile, which reportedly infuriated defense officials. Safronov was apparently also investigating sales of missiles and advanced fighter jets to Iran and Syria via Belarus, and authorities had threatened him with criminal investigation in connection with his plans to write on this sensitive subject.

As part of the broader pattern, the state is paying more attention to international media, especially international broadcasting. The authorities have focused on the broadcasts of the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, whose radio programming provides an alternative news voice to listeners across the country. The Kremlin has undertaken an intimidation campaign against RFE/RL's partners -- Russian radio stations that rebroadcast Radio Liberty programs -- subjecting them to debilitating harassment. In August, Bolshoye Radio, a Moscow radio station, announced that it would no longer carry the BBC's Russian-language broadcasts. Although technical violations were cited as the official reason for the station's decision to pull the BBC off the air, many condemned the act as censorship.

The campaign of repression comes on top of a systematic effort since Putin came to power to cleanse the country's media landscape of independent voices of political consequence. All of the major national television channels, from which most people get their news, have come under state control during the Putin era. State-managed media now function as a propaganda machine slavishly touting the Kremlin's achievements, bringing to mind Brezhnev-era news standards.

The official inquiry into Politkovskaya's murder could have represented an important step forward, but it has seemingly fallen apart. Almost a year into the investigation, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika removed the inquiry's key investigator, an official who had won the respect of Politkovskaya's colleagues.

In a system of rule by law rather than rule of law, it is not surprising that the Politkovskaya case has become a window into the larger problems confronting the country, the very issues on which she so courageously reported: political violence, corruption and lawlessness.

Meanwhile, the grim state of affairs for press freedom in Russia cannot be viewed in a vacuum. The ability of journalists and editors to freely and independently ply their trade tends to be a barometer for other fundamental freedoms. The crackdown on the press has wider implications for the country's capacity to normalize its politics, address rampant graft and develop effective, institutions based on the rule of law.

As Russia girds itself for a critical change of leadership, the news media's downward trajectory bodes poorly for its democratic prospects.

Date: October 5th 2007

Source: RFERL

Location:

Subject: Grozny Activist Receives Inaugural Politkovskaya Award

News link: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/10/36C99D8C-9F83-46F4-B804-570FA446DBDD.html

As a journalist and activist in Chechnya, Natalya Estemirova often worked with Russian investigative correspondent Anna Politkovskaya.

Today, Estemirova will have the bittersweet honor of being presented with an award named after her colleague, who was slain in Moscow one year ago, on October 7, 2006. The award and a cash prize is to be presented every year by the nongovernmental organization RAW in WAR (Reach All Women In War) to a female human-rights defender whose work in a conflict embodies that of Politkovskaya's in Chechnya.

Estemirova works for the Russian human-rights watchdog Memorial in Chechnya. She is a native of Grozny, the capital of the war-torn Chechen Republic in which Politkovskaya tirelessly worked to highlight human-rights abuses. Estemirova told RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service by telephone today that while the problems in Chechnya might not always be in the public eye, that does not mean they have gone away.

"We have a lot of problems right now, most of all with people who have found themselves in very difficult situations," Estemirova says. "In Chechnya, there is a big problem with fabricated criminal cases and many young Chechen men are in prison in Russia under difficult conditions. Can you imagine, since 2000 the authorities have been stirring things up so anybody with power thinks they can just beat Chechens. Now there is a situation where many of them are imprisoned for nothing, for crimes that were committed by others, crimes that they had no relation to. Now these cases need to be reexamined. This is work that needs to be done by defense attorneys, and this work needs to be paid for. This is what I want to spend this prize on."

One Outstanding Goal

Estemirova, who will be presented with her award by Irish Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire during a ceremony today in London, says she has one outstanding goal -- to solve at least one of the numerous missing-persons cases in Chechnya.

"We have cases where the relatives themselves have conducted investigations about where their son, or brother, or husband is. Who is for this? They have a lot of information, even names, but for some reason the prosecutor doesn't do anything about it," Estemirova says. "These are investigations that only a professional, like an attorney, can carry out and make prosecutors answer according to the law. It would be good to get at least one case heard in court, in Chechnya, not in Russia."

She says that nothing is done in Russia to address the many cases of human-rights abuses documented by Memorial in Chechnya. Instead, victims and activists have to turn to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

"Changes have happened, changes for the worse," she says. "As far as human rights go, it is worse because, first of all, nothing has been done to investigate the crimes that have been committed in Chechnya since 2000. And they have still done nothing to investigate these. We are mainly working in Strasbourg. It is there where these Chechen cases are being heard. It is there where the criminals and the victims of these criminals are being named and where it is being demanded that these cases be investigated in Russia."

To Preserve Politkovskaya's Work

RAW in WAR (Reach All Women In War) is a new, international NGO that supports female human-rights defenders and female victims of conflict throughout the world. Mariana Katzarova, a journalist who worked in the war zones of Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya, founded RAW in WAR.

"We have just established this prize in the name of Anna Politkovskaya. It will be awarded every year on or around October 7, the day Anna was killed. It will be awarded to women journalists and human-rights activists who are working in different war zones and hot spots in the world," Katzarova tells RFE/RL. "We have decided to establish this prize in order to preserve the work of Anna Politkovskaya, to help and support women who are human-rights activists and journalists who, like Anna, tried to assist the victims in those hot spots despite the fact that they risked their lives doing this."

The recipient of the Anna Politkovskaya Award is decided by a committee of nearly 100 influential human-rights advocates from throughout the world, including former Czech President Vaclav Havel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Yelena Bonner, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, and Gloria Steinem.

Date: October 4th 2007

Source: RFERL

Location: Prague

Subject: RFE/RL Marks Anniversary Of Politkovskaya Murder

News link: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/10/07d8cd2c-7518-4d7e-b390-725cba592f41.html

Friends and colleagues of slain Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya gathered at RFE/RL's Prague headquarters today to honor her memory through personal remembrances and discussions of the struggle for press freedom in Russia.

In addition to today's conference in Prague, ceremonies and vigils marking Politkovskaya's assassination also are scheduled to be held in Moscow, New York, Washington, Stockholm, Hamburg, Paris, and London.

Speaking via video link from Moscow, Dmitry Muratov, Politkovskaya's editor in chief at her newspaper, "Novaya gazeta," recited the telephone number that so many people had dialed to convey the truth about Russia's war in Chechnya and other issues that received little or no coverage in the country's mainstream press.

"798-1034. This telephone number stopped answering on October 7 last year," Muratov said in an emotional speech. "Hundreds of people called this number. On this number, she heard numerous curses and threats. She heard many expressions of gratitude. On this number, people called her to set up meetings during which she was given extremely important information on corruption in the Russian Federation."

Muratov said "Novaya gazeta" will reactivate Politkovskaya's old mobile telephone on October 8 in hopes of reviving the stream of calls ended by an assassin's bullets one year ago. Once again, Muratov said, Russians will be able to call with their pain, grief, gratitude, and information about official malfeasance -- and get a sympathetic ear from Politkovskaya's former colleagues.

Murdered In Her Apartment Building

Politkovskaya was shot dead on October 7, 2006, as she stepped into the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. She was hit with three bullets in the chest and one in the head. She was 48. No one has yet been convicted in her murder. Muratov accused Russia's security services of participating in Politkovskaya's assassination and sabotaging the current criminal investigation.

"She was a person who did not place any luminary or authority above justice. She was absolutely undiscriminating in her choice of enemies," Muratov said, "Now let them be afraid. They, the corrupt officers of Russia's security services, are seeking to ruin the investigation that is being carried out by the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office and 'Novaya gazeta.' I can tell you that special services officers and Interior Ministry officials aided, participated in, and organized Anna's murder."

After a year of apparent inaction, Russian Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika announced in August that the murder was carried out by a Moscow-based gang led by an ethnic Chechen. He said 10 people had been arrested, including a member of the Federal Security Service and several former and active police officers. Within days, however, two of the suspects were released. Russia media reports cast doubt on the involvement of two other detainees.

Yelena Rykovtseva, who hosts a daily news program on RFE/RL's Russian Service, was the last journalist to interview Politkovskaya.

"I remember this moment one year ago when I was told that Anna had been murdered," Rykovtseva said. "I was horrified. Not only because the person I have known for 10 years was dead, but especially because I felt that I could be indirectly responsible for that. Just two days before the tragedy Anna was in my broadcast, saying very critical things about [current Chechen President] Ramzan Kadyrov. This could have been the last straw that was followed by revenge."

Death Met With Indifference In Russia

On the day she was killed, Politkovskaya was due to file an article exposing cases of torture by members of the "Kadyrovtsy," Kadyrov's personal militia, which is notorious for its brutal practices. Rykovtseva added that the outpouring of grief that her death sparked across the globe contrasted sharply with the indifference her death met in her homeland. Most Russians, she says, still don't understand what they have lost.

"People in Russia value freedom of speech much less than people in other countries," Rykovtseva said. "That's the reason why Anna's job was not that appreciated in Russia. That's why you don't hear people protesting against the shameful censorship on Russian television channels. Russian society doesn't seem to have even understood what they lost with Anna. They have lost their only chance to learn the truth about Chechnya."

Kevin Klose, a former RFE/RL president and the current head of National Public Radio in the United States, says Politkovskaya has become, through her slaying, the face of the Chechen conflict for Westerners who find the brutal conflict perplexing.

"I think the entire sequence of the Chechnya conflict is very confusing in the West," Klose said. "But when you have a single moment, like the killing of a single individual who has borne witness to that, people see it as a kind of martyrdom issue. It starts to attract their attention on a very personal and specific level."

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek called for intensified international pressure on the Russian government to uphold the rule of law and freedom of expression. "It is important for Russian authorities to investigate her murder to the fullest extent,” adding that “the outcome of the investigation of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya will attest to the current situation in Russia.”

Growing Repression

Many observers have called Politkovskaya's death a turning point in Putin's Russia, heralding a new era of repression and fear. But Edward Lucas, deputy editor of the international section of the British weekly magazine "The Economist," says Politkovskaya's killing was part of a larger pattern of growing repression that started almost immediately after the Soviet collapse and picked up pace under Putin.

"Anna's murder was a symptom of a process that probably started, in a way, back in 1991 when they failed to liquidate the KGB," said Lucas, who covered Putin's rise and early years in the Kremlin as "The Economist's" Moscow bureau chief. "It accelerated more when Putin took over and when he consolidated power, and more after Beslan [hostage tragedy]. It's, I would say, still accelerating."

Many participants agreed that Politkovskaya's work had helped expose that process of mounting repression in modern-day Russia. Few, however, were optimistic that either her work or her untimely death would be able to reverse Russia's current course -- or that there is anyone left in the country who is able to rise to the challenge of following in her footsteps.

Date: October 4th 2007

Source: The Nation

Location: New York, USA

Subject: Anna Politkovskaya's Legacy

News link: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/10/05/006.html

One year ago, the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered. The fearless, crusading journalist for Russia's leading opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, was just 48 years old when she was found in her Moscow apartment building, shot in the head.

Her unflinching investigative reporting on the brutality and corruption of the Chechen war, as well as other abuses of official power, had made her the target of numerous death threats. On one of her many reporting trips to Chechnya, she was detained and beaten by Russian troops who threw her into a pit, threatened to rape her and performed a mock execution. But, as one of her colleagues wrote soon after her murder, "Anna believed that fate had given her a mission: to tell people the truth about what was actually going on in Chechnya." When she was killed, Politkovskaya was working on an article claiming Chechen civilians were being tortured by security forces loyal to the region's pro-Moscow Consul and now President Ramzan Kadyrov.

In an editorial published immediately after Politkovskaya's assassination, the paper's staff pledged, "While there is a Novaya Gazeta, her killers won't sleep soundly." Four days after her death, the newspaper published her unfinished article, along with photos of the torture victims.

This September, Russia's Prosecutor General announced that ten people had been arrested in Politkovskaya's killing, including a police major, three former police officers and lieutenant colonel in the FSB, the former KGB Yet, for all practical purposes, one year later, her brazen murder remains unsolved. Despite what Russian officials have claimed as breakthroughs, Roman Shleinov, an investigative editor at Novaya Gazeta, says the truth is still buried. The paper's courageous editor-in-chief, Dmitrii Muratov, who was initially satisfied with the progress of the official investigation--even cooperating with it-- now believes that media leaks, the demotion of the lead investigator, the release of a key suspect, and claims of gaping holes in the evidence have undermined hopes of justice being served. And the paper's editors dispute the official version of foreign involvement in Politkovskaya's murder --that it was done in order to discredit the Kremlin and destabilize the Russian state. Novaya Gazeta continues to conduct an independent investigation of its martyred reporter's murder.

However murky the official Russian investigation, what remains clear is that Anna Politkovskaya endures as an example of the importance of truth and courage in journalism. It is that importance --and her fearless pursuit of justice for the powerless and vulnerable --which will be remembered in memorials,from Moscow to London and New York, this weekend.

In London, on the evening of October 5th, a new international human rights group supporting women human rights defenders and women and girl victims of war and conflict -- RAW in WAR (Reach all Women in WAR)--will mark its founding by honoring Anna. Mariana Katzarova, a journalist, human rights advocate and RAW's founder, told me that Anna was very supportive of RAW's work and had just agreed to join the group's advisory board a few days before she was killed. To honor her, and other women human rights defenders, Mariana says, RAW decided to establish a RAW in WAR annual award in the name of Anna Politkovskaya. This year the award will go to Natalya Estemirova, a woman activist from Anna's war--the war in Chechnya. Natalya continues to work for the human rights group Memorial in the Chechen capital of Grozny. (We are publishing her disturbing article about how she and Anna fought to bring a torturer to justice.)

Since 1992, 47 Russian journalists have been murdered, 33 during Boris Yeltsin's presidency, and the vast majority of cases remain unsolved. Some of the most fearless--and vulnerable--of these reporters were women, like Yulia Yudina, chief editor of a provincial paper far from Moscow, who was investigating local corruption. Today, many of those speaking up for media freedom and independence are women, often in the provinces of Russia. Indeed in these bleak times for independent media in Russia, And while a great many mainstream Moscow journalists are compliant, there are hopeful signs of solidarity among the country's journalists. Last May, for example, TV2, located in the Siberian city of Tomsk, posted an open letter to President Putin in defense of media freedom. Within a few days, more than 2000 journalists from almost all Russian regions had signed the petition.

While Anna Politkovskaya's paper, Novaya Gazeta, remains the most critical oppositionist newspaper with national influence in Putin's Russia, it has paid a heavy price for its crusading investigations into high-level corruption, human rights violations and abuses of power. Three of its reporters--Igor Domnikov and Yuri Shchekochikhin-- have been killed-- Ana being the most recent victim. Yet, the paper's tenacious editor, Dmitrii Muratov continues to fight for press freedom --and for justice on behalf of his slain colleagues. This November, he will receive the Committee to Protect Journalist's 2007 International Press Freedom Award at a ceremony in New York city.

Lost amid so much of the remembrance of Anna's killing, one year later, is a sad irony: She was assassinated on the 20th anniversary of the unfolding of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policy, in 1986, which led to an increasingly free press. Today, the former Soviet President--who has long been a financial supporter of Novaya Gazeta (he donated part of his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize Award to pay for start-up computers and salaries), is a part owner of the newspaper. It was his words, upon learning of Politkovskaya's murder, that stay with me on this anniversary: " Her murder was a savage crime against the country, against all of us...a blow to the entire democratic, independent press." Let all who care about a free press and a democratic society work to ensure that Anna Politkovskaya's newspaper thrive as an oppositionist, independent force-- and that her killers be brought to justice.

Date: October 2007

Source: RFERL

Location: Prague

Subject: Remembering a Courageous Journalist

News link: http://www.rferl.org/specials/politkovskaya/

During the years she spent chronicling the horrors of the wars in Chechnya for the newspaper "Novaya gazeta," Anna Politkovskaya had countless brushes with death, including a mock execution and an apparent poisoning. But on October 7, 2006, there was no mercy. She was shot dead in her Moscow apartment block, robbing Russia of one of its bravest investigative journalists.

While the precise motives behind her killing remain unclear, few have doubts it is connected to her investigative work. Not only because her slaying bore all the hallmarks of a contract killing, but also since her relentless attacks on President Vladimir Putin's regime and its campaign in Chechnya had earned her many powerful enemies.

On the first anniversary of her death, RFE/RL looks at the life and work of Anna Politkovskaya and the effect her death had on the media in Russia, as well as the consequences the killing of a well-known critic of the Kremlin has for Russia's civil society.

"Russia One Year After the Murder of Anna Politkovskaya"

In the right sidebar to this newslink, you can find video from the conference titled "Russia One Year After the Murder of Anna Politkovskaya" hosted on October 4 at RFE/RL headquarters in Prague, with panel discussions about the effect Politkovskaya's death had on the media environment in Russia and the state of that environment today (see sidebar for multimedia presentation and video of the conference).

Politkovskaya Remembered By Those She Wrote About

RFE/RL also talked to the people whose lives Anna Politkovskaya touched through her reporting on the conflict in Chechnya and the North Caucasus, as well as on terrorist attacks and conflicts inside Russia. As one person who came to know her recalls, she never took sides, but she "defended specific people. She took names, studied their history, investigated the tragedy of each person."

A Woman Who 'Did Everything According To Her Principles'

Days after Anna Politkovskaya was killed in October 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin played down her public importance, saying that although she was "known" in journalistic and human-rights circles, her influence in Russian political life was "minimal." RFE/RL spoke to people who knew her and remember her significance as far more than "minimal."

Chechen Woman's Cause On Hold Without Its Champion

Reports penned by Anna Politkovskaya often had a human element, exposing wrongs committed against everyday citizens. The story of a young mother's abduction at the hands of purported Chechen security personnel was one of many that Politkovskaya told to the world. Her slaying meant the loss of a key voice in the effort to unlock the mystery about what happened to Milana Ozdoyeva. RFE/RL spoke with Milana's mother, whose daughter's fate remains unknown to this day.

Helping Mothers Survive 'The Biggest Grief In The World'

In October 2002, an armed group took more than 800 people hostage inside the Dubrovka theater in southeast Moscow. Their demand: an end to the war in Chechnya. By the time the siege ended, however, all the hostage takers had been shot and killed, and 130 of the hostages were also dead, most from the effects of a gas pumped into the theater by special forces. Anna Politkovskaya was one of the few people permitted inside the building during the standoff. Two women who lost children in the "Nord-Ost" siege remember Politkovskaya.

'She Lived Only For Other People'

For four days in December 2004, members of the police force carried out a so-called special operation in the city of Blagoveshchensk and neighboring settlements in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. Hundreds of people, mainly young men, were rounded up without cause and then beaten with impunity. Anna Politkovskaya traveled to Blagoveshchensk to cover the story for "Novaya gazeta." RFE/RL spoke to local people about their memories of the crusading journalist.

'Her Articles About Beslan Helped Us Understand The Truth'

Much of Anna Politkovskaya's work focused on Chechnya, where she was a vocal critic of Kremlin policy and the local pro-Moscow administration. But she also investigated incidents of terrorism throughout the Caucasus -- including the notorious 2004 Beslan school siege. RFE/RL spoke to residents of Beslan about Politkovskaya.

Reuniting Lost Loved Ones

Anna Politkovskaya is remembered as a journalist who told the truth about the war in Chechnya. In the course of her reporting, she met many wives and mothers, whose husbands or sons were still missing -- many after being taken away by Russian security forces. RFE/RL spoke to some of those women, who say that Politkovskaya was instrumental in reuniting them with their loved ones.

In North Caucasus, Poems For Anna

Anna Politkovskaya didn't consider herself to be an expert on the Caucasus. But a great number of her articles were dedicated to the problems of this tumultuous Russian region. She wrote about it all: the murders and kidnappings of peaceful civilians, the flagrant violations of human rights, the legacy of two military campaigns in Chechnya, the Ossetia-Ingush conflict, the Beslan tragedy. People in the North Caucasus remember a woman of singular intellect, courage, and sensitivity.

Date: October 4th 2007

Source: The Economist

Location: London

Subject: A Silent Voice

News link: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9898118

Anna Politkovskaya one year later

How she would have relished the farcical investigation into her own murder. Anna Politkovskaya’s speciality was exposing the brutality and blunders of Russian officialdom, and the crude and greedy politicisation of what should be the neutral exercise of state power. Only modesty would have prevented her penning some bitter words about Vladimir Putin’s dismissal of her “marginal” role and mocking the authorities’ insistence that her murder was ordered by Russia’s enemies (who else, after all, has an interest in discrediting the Kremlin?).

Her own fate aside, the 12 months since the murder of Russia’s best-known campaigning journalist would have provided material for a weighty sequel to “Putin’s Russia”, her last book, which mixed acute observation with caustic commentary. It is easy to imagine the passion with which she would have written about the fate of Larisa Arap, a Murmansk-based opposition activist who unwisely wrote an article complaining about the sexual abuse of minors in mental hospitals. She went to see a doctor for some minor paperwork; when he found out who she was he had her locked up in psychiatric hospital. It took a month to get her out.

Politkovskaya would have noticed the growing numbers of Kremlin critics in exile: Yelena Tregubova, a journalist who unwisely wrote a gossipy insider’s account of life at the top, including a startling description of a dinner á deux with Mr Putin. She has fled to London. She also would have noted the fate of Boris Kuznetsov, Russia’s best-known defence lawyer, who has moved abroad to escape charges of leaking state secrets (he complained to Russia’s constitutional court that the FSB was bugging a client’s phone).

She would have been particularly irate at the authorities’ closure of the Educated Media Foundation, whose director, Manana Aslamazian, has moved to Paris. Ms Aslamazyan’s “crime” (which led the to the closure of Russia’s biggest independent journalist-training outfit) was failing to declare all the foreign currency she was bringing in to Russia; that is a rule, habitually broken, that exists only to provide a basis for checking those wanting to take foreign currency out of the country.

Smoke would have been rising from the Politkovskaya keyboard at this week’s “news” (better described as a twist in the script), which had Mr Putin smoothly taking the top spot in United Russia’s election list for December, paving the way for him to become prime minister.

“Why do I so dislike Putin? I dislike him for a matter-of-factness worse than felony, for his cynicism, for his racism, for his lies...for the massacre of the innocents,” she wrote in “Putin’s Russia”. She used to dismiss him as a failed spy with delusions of grandeur; now she might be mocking him as a would-be Tsar.

But she would have noticed some flickers of good news too. Kremlin pressure against Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine in the past 12 months has proved fruitless. Her biggest western bugbears—Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and Silvio Berlusconi—are history. Their successors are taking a much tougher line against Russia.

It is no longer quite possible to argue, as she did in a despairing finale to “Putin’s Russia”: “[The West] barely reacts…it finds much about today’s Russia entirely to its taste: the vodka, the caviar, the gas, the oil, the dancing bears, the practitioners of a particular profession...Europe and the rest of the globe are perfectly satisfied with the way things are going.”

That at least is no longer the case. But it would not help assuage Politkovskaya’s greatest concern: that the Russian people seem so indifferent to their rulers’ shortcomings, and so willing to vote for those who despise democracy.