Putin and the murder of Anna Politkovskaya
By Patrick Richter
19 October 2006
More than a week after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, there is still no
definite evidence to indicate who was responsible. However, when one poses the
question of who stood most to benefit from silencing a prominent and courageous
opponent of the terror being carried out in Chechnya, then the answer is the
ruling clique surrounding President Putin and his governor in Chechnya, Ramsan
Kadyrov.
Putin made his first comments on this disgraceful crime only two days after
the murder, when he declared that it was an abominable and unacceptable crime,
an atrocity, only then to immediately add that Politkovskaya had been a sharp
critic of the ruling powers in Russia, although with very little influence in
Russia. He told the German Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that her
murder harms the Russian and, in particular, the Chechen leadership much more
than any newspaper article could do.
In the manner of a mafia godfather who increasingly has problems with his
birthday gift, Putin (whose 54th birthday fell on the day of Politkovskayas
murder) has sought to play down the crime in order to allow it to disappear
later into police files.
A crowd of 2,500 attended the burial of Politikovskaya on October 10, but the
only official representative attending was the governments human rights
ambassador, Vladimir Lukin.
The murder of Politkovskaya led to a storm of indignation throughout Russia
and internationally. In an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who
played host to Putin last week in Germany, the Russian journalist Elena
Tregubova, who herself narrowly escaped an assassination attempt two years ago,
gave this assessment of her murdered colleague: She was the most consistent and
incorruptible critic of Putin and his political regime. She ended the letter
with the words, Do you really believe, Mrs. Merkel, that Russian gas or Russian
oil is sufficient payment to justify closing ones eyes to the physical
destruction of the opposition and the free press in Russia? In this situation
silence means complicity.
The journalist Andrey Babitski, who has also suffered repression because of
his work in Chechnya, told radio Svoboda that Politkovskaya was one of
the last journalists who wrote on the dictatorship of Kadyrov, on his despotism
and the violence in Chechnya. Up to today there is no other journalist who
conducted such scrupulous research and laid bare the reality of Kadyrovs
Chechnya.
The human rights activist Elena Bonner also criticized Putin in the radio
channel Echo Moscow. To say that her publications had damaged Russia
means admitting that the truth harms Russia, she said.
Rupert Neudeck, founder of the private aid organization Cap Anamur, wrote,
The blood froze in my veins when I heard the message on Sunday. Anna
Politkovskaya was one of the most courageous and finest representatives of the
profession of journalism. Whether it was convenient or not she documented the
entire repression and humiliation suffered by Chechens in the North Caucasus.
For many years she flew in month after month and reported bluntly and without
frills.
This is exactly why she represented so much of an obstacle to the Putin
regime. Since coming to power, first as prime minister in 1999 and then as
president in March 2000, Putin has developed a form of government characterised
by powerful authoritarian tendencies.
The increasingly aggressive foreign policy adopted by the US, which ever more
openly threatened Russias traditional spheres of influence, forced the Kremlin
to change course. The 1999 US-led NATO war against Serbia, a traditional ally of
Russia, was seen as an unmistakable warning that the US was ever more openly
challenging Russias remaining influence over the former republics of the Soviet
Union.
In order to confront this danger, influential layers of the post-Soviet
ruling elite decided to adopt a tougher line and sought a solution based on an
alliance between the countrys intelligence services, the army and the various
clans organised around a number of powerful oligarchs. The uncontrolled
exploitation of the former Soviet Union by the oligarchs under former president
Boris Yeltsin had unleashed tensions between competing interests that
increasingly threatened Russias political system. There was the risk that a
divided Russia would no longer be able to stand up against the US.
After coming to power Putin introduced a broad range of measures to increase
the power of the state apparatus and strengthen his governments ability to deal
with any opposition from home or abroad. His aim was the ruthless elimination of
any sort of political oppositioneven of the most limited democratic natureand
the repression of the broad majority of the population which had been plunged
into poverty and desperation.
In a number of stages the countrys electoral laws were increasingly stripped
of any element of democracy. Among other measures, the country was dividedas
was the case a hundred years earlier under the Czarinto seven regions ruled by
governors handpicked by Putin, and who in most cases had their roots in the
countrys secret service or army.
At the same time the media was forced to adapt to the general line of the
regime, and independent media outlets were suppressed or forced to close down.
Oligarchs who opposed the new course, such as Boris Beresowski and Vladimir
Gussinski, were driven out of the country and their media empires, which
included influential newspapers and television stations, were put under the
control of state institutions. Critical journalists were forced to quit and
those who remained were required to spout the line laid down by the Kremlin.
According to the figures by the organization Reporters without Borders,
independent journalism has become virtually impossible in Russia. In a list of
167 countries dealing with press freedom, Russia ranks 138th, compared with
Germany at 18th and the US at 44th). While Reporters without Borders reports a
total of 42 journalists murdered in Russia since 1992, with 85 percent of cases
remaining unsolved, other estimates put the number of journalists killed since
the collapse of the Soviet Union as high as 246.
The last prominent murder of a Russian journalist took place in July 2004,
when Pavel Khlebnikov was gunned down. Khlebnikov was the editor of the Russian
edition of the magazine Forbes and author of The Godfather in the
Kremlin, a book on the ascent to wealth and power of oligarch Boris
Beresowski. Since then, the last remnants of independent media in Russia have
been subject to increasing repression, with punishments handed out to critical
journalists or advertisement fees removed from the offending newspaper or
radio or television channel.
The most important single measure to ideologically justify this new course,
however, was Russias war against terror and the second Chechnya war.
The pretext for a renewed offensive against Chechnya was provided in August
and September 1999, when Chechen separatists invaded the neighbouring republic
of Dagestan, and shortly afterwards blocks of flats were blown up in Moscow and
other cities, claiming more than 300 victims. In both events there is
considerable evidence indicating that the attacks were in fact deliberate
provocations carried out by the Russian secret service.
In the military campaign which followed, much of Chechnya was laid to waste,
tens of thousands were killed, and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee the
republic. All of the government structures that had been painstakingly rebuilt
after the first Chechnya war (1994-1996) were promptly declared to be no longer
legitimate.
Instead, at the official end of the second Chechnya war in 2000, Akhmad
Kadyrov was appointed the new governor and, following a rigged election in
October 2002, proclaimed president of Chechnya. Following Achmads murder in May
2004, his post was taken over by his son Ramsan.
The task of the Kadyrov clan consisted of securing formal political control
over Chechnya for the Kremlin and at the same time keeping the conflict going in
collaboration with the Russian army. Such a state of ongoing tension and
hysteria over the alleged threat of Chechen terrorism provided the ideal
pretext for further draconian repressive measures within Russia itself.
To this end, the Kadyrov clan and the Russian army were given free rein to
conduct continuous provocations against the local population in Chechnya. The
region became a sort of lawless playground, where the most brutal and ruthless
crimes could be carried out and remain unpunished.
A thriving market in weapons, drugs and a slave trade became the mechanism by
which both sidesthe Russian army and the Chechen warlordscould profit from the
situation. Human life was rendered worthless and the military, together with
criminal gangs, could intimidate, extort, rape or murder residents and their
families at will, without fear of retribution.
The kidnapping of family members in order to extort the rest of the family
became a regular occurrence. Victims would be held in pits under indescribable
conditions and were tortured on a regular basis to drive up their ransom
price.
Such grievous violations of human rights were the issues Anna Politkovskaya
systematically and painstakingly reported from the onset of the new war in 1999.
Through her reports, she became an unquestionable source of moral authority in
Russia and internationally.
Her colleague at the paper Novaya Gazeta, Wjatscheslaw Ismailow,
characterized her as follows: Anna had received murder threats for seven years
and was afraid. But she was able to overcome her fear, because she understood
how important her work was.
In her last radio report for Svoboda on October 5, on the 30th
birthday of Ramsan Kadyrov, she spoke about the increasing number of kidnappings
for which Kadyrov bore direct responsibility. She described Kadyrov as a
coward, armed to the teeth, sitting in the middle of his bodyguards. On her
current work, she commented, Above my table there are two photographs which I
am currently investigating. They show abuses carried out yesterday and today in
Kadyrovs torture chambers. These people were kidnapped by Kadyrovs men for
absolutely no reason. . . The photos of which I speak show horribly abused
bodies.
With regard to Kadyrov, she said, My personal dream for Kadyrovs birthday
is simple. I dream that he is sitting in the dock while a thorough legal
investigation into all of his crimes is being carried out, with all the
necessary consequences.
She attracted special attention because some of her own investigations forced
the Russian leadership in the Kremlin to participate in a number of court cases
that shed light on the repressive and brutal methods of its rule.
Putin will never have another birthday, commented Chechen journalist Manat
Abdullajewa. It will always be the day on which Anna Politkovskaya was
murdered, a woman who could neither be bought nor intimidated. The bloody deed
of October 7 is an indictment not only of the Kremlin despot, but of the entire
regime in Russia headed Putin.