Anna Politkovskaya Murdered

Anna Politkovskaya Murdered

Prominent investigative reporter and activist shot in her apartment building

Russia has lost one of its most prominent and courageous journalists to what many are calling a political assassination.

Investigative reporter and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya, renowned for her critical coverage of conflict in Chechnya and of the Putin presidency, was shot dead in her apartment building in Moscow on October 7. 

Politkovskaya, 48, was a special correspondent for the Moscow independent daily, Novaya Gazeta. 

“She was the conscience of Russian journalism,” said Oleg Panfilov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.

“There are almost no more journalists like her left today,” said Vitaly Yaro-shevsky, depu-ty editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, at Polit-kovskaya’s funeral on October 10.  “Anna was a fearless person; not reckless, but courageous. She’s the third person to have died from our paper.” 

Leaders of many countries – including the United States, press and human rights activists have condemned the killing and called it a blow to Russia’s ailing press freedoms. 

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, who recently bought a 49 percent stake in Novaya Gazeta, called the murder “a true political homicide, a vendetta.”

Gorbachev was not alone in speculating that Politkovskaya’s killing was politically motivated, and in particular that it was connected with her investigative work in Chechnya. In Polit-kovskaya’s last interview, on October 5, she told the Russian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that “right now, I have two photographs on my desk. I am conducting an investigation about torture today in [Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan] Kadyrov’s prisons. These are people who were abducted by the ‘Kadyr-ovtsy’ [his armed security service] for completely inexplicable reasons and who died. These are bodies absolutely disfigured by torture.”

President Vladimir Putin condemned the killing and said that “all necessary efforts will be made for an objective investigation into [her] tragic death.” A few days later, he said that “the murder has done more damage to Russia... than Politkovskaya’s articles.” Further, he said the Kremlin had “reliable” sources that linked the killing to someone’s desire to stir up anti-Russian sentiments around the world.

Prosecutor General Yuri Chayka said he would take investigation under his personal control, as his predecessors had promised on similar occasions before, including the 2004 murder of Paul Khlebnikov, editor of Russian Forbes. 

Novaya Gazeta launched its own investigation and promised a $930,000 reward for information leading to arrest of Politkovskaya’s killer.

Politkovskaya is the 42nd journalist killed in Russia since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and the 12th in a contract-style killing since President Putin came to power in 2000, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Politkovskaya was born in 1958 in New York; her parents were Soviet diplomats at the United Nations. After receiving a journalism degree from Moscow State University in 1980, she worked in the Soviet daily Izvestia. She joined Novaya Gazeta in 1999.

During her tenure at Novaya Gazeta, she traveled frequently to Chechnya and the North Caucasus to pursue stories at great personal risk. Her critical reports on human rights abuses by the Russian military often drew the wrath of Russian authorities. 

Politkovskaya’s books, The Dirty War and Putin’s Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy were so politically charged that no Russian publisher dared print them. They were published only in the West.

Politkovskaya often re-ceived threats, and had been jailed, exiled and poisoned during her career, according to CPJ. In 2001, Polit-kovskaya was forced to hide out in Vienna for several months after receiving email threats from an officer whom she accused of civilian torture. 

En route to Beslan during the September 2004 school siege, Polit-kovskaya fell ill with food poisoning in what she and others suspected was a plot to incapacitate her. 

She was also among the few people who entered the Moscow theater during the October 2002 hostage crisis, in a bid to negotiate with Chechen militants. 

In 2004, Politkovskaya won an Olof Palme Prize for human rights work. CPJ had named Politkovskaya one of the world’s top press freedom figures of the past 25 years; the award was to be announced in the October 2006 issue of CPJ’s magazine.

Politkovskaya is survived by two children.