Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya murdered

Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead this Saturday. The Russian journalist was known for her critical reporting on the government of Vladimir Putin and its handling of the Chechen conflict. The day of her death was Mr. Putin's birthday, and some see significance in this fact. Also on that day, she had planned to file a story on the Chechen authorities' torture practices with the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where she was a correspondent. The identity of her killer or killers is unknown.

Jasmina Tesanovic knew and worked with Politkovskaya, and shares this with BoingBoing:

Anna Politkovskaya Silenced

The Russian icon was finally done in by a hitman,
after many failed attempts on her life in the past
years.

Some years ago, I was in Stavanger (Norway) at a
PEN Conference. The topic of the round table was
writers and wars in Israel and Palestine. Jacques
Derrida was there as a moderator.

In the midst of our difficult peace negotiations
around the table, alarming news arrived: Anna,
a fellow member of PEN, the Russian
journalist who wrote against her own
government's military abuse, had been
transported to Vienna. Due, of course, to the death
threats,
at first dismissed by some media as signs of her own
paranoia.

The Writers in Prison Committee of PEN was engaged in
helping Anna protect her own life and freedom of
expression. I witnessed a few phone calls. I remember
her unwillingness to leave her country or her work,
or to seek any safety through silence in exile.

PEN provides certain possibilities to a writer
whose life is at stake in their home country. I met a
writer dragged out of a Yemeni prison by an activist
from Norway. As a member of the Norwegian Pen
Center, I was also being offered some possibility of
Norwegian asylum.

But what is a real option for a journalist and a
writer whom freedom of expression is denied at home?
Prison in one's own country, silence in exile? Silence
is not an option, and Anna clearly stated that, by
turning
on her heels, going back to her Moscow home, remaining
active,
writing constantly and narrowly escaping attempts on
her life.

[Jasmina's account continues after the jump. Image: (c) Novaya Gazeta.]

Her investigative political journalism was not only
writing, it was human rights activism. Anna
was writing against the political and military abuse
of the Russian army against the Chechen civilians and
also rebels. She physically took part in many
tragedies on the ground.

She was not a Woman in Black but was guided by the
same
principle to stand against her country' s military,
as a "traitor to her own nation" as women
pacifists are often considered. Her relentless
investigations of the
dirty work of her president Vladimir Putin was a
constant threat to the military of all sides, who
never
want the facts on the ground to come to light,
least of all in print. Then it becomes clear that all
wars
are dirty wars. The common people are the ultimate
victims, be they women, children, drafted Russian
soldiers or volunteer suicide bombers. In fact, Anna
receiving death threats from
all military sides.

Who killed Anna? I am sure it was not a lone gunman.
Some years ago, the Serbian journalist Slavko
Curuvija was killed in the almost identical way here
in downtown Belgrade. By chance, my family was
involved
in the last minutes of Curuvija's life, while he was
tracked down
and executed in front of his own door.

After the fall of Milosevic, Curuviija's secret police
file
was opened. We learned that his secret police team
hired a hitmen to execute the actual murder while they
handled the logistics. This is the nature of such
episodes.
I even know the faces of the neighbors
who spied on him, and us, for the police. Until this
very day, no one has been arrested for killing him. I
forgive my neighbors, but
I am sure that no peace reconciliation and justice can
be done in my country until there is some
discontinuity with the
everyday terror of the Milosevic regime. His police
and hitmen
are still living among us, literally in my street.

The prime minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic, was also
killed
by those same hitmen, a couple of years later, for
daring to meddle with that criminal/political elite.
The trial of the Prime Minister's killers is still
under way, but under fierce pressure and in a haze of
death threats. That trial is now presided over by
three women judges.

The other trials in special courts for war crimes in
Belgrade are also mostly initiated and run by women.
Women such as Natasa Kandic, Sonja Biserko, and Zanka
Stojanovic. Zanka is the mother of a TV worker killed
in a NATO bombing, media journalists deliberately
placed in harms' way, so that their deaths at the
hands of the enemy would profit Milosevic politically.

Last night, we lit candles in the square of Belgrade
in the name of all the victims of war of our criminal
regime, including the first Serbian soldier who
refused to take up arms against the Croats, Bosnians,
Albanians. He committed suicide. The police were all
around us calling us a "high risk group."

At the same time in Moscow, crowds of people lit
candles in Anna's memory, asking for justice.

Not all journalists get killed by assassins; soldiers
rarely refuse unjust wars at the cost of their own
lives. But those who do have definitely something in
common. Call it moral integrity.

If we allow the silenced majority to eliminate those
voices, we will all be living in silence and exile
within our own homes — wherever in this world those
homes may be.

– – – – –

Jasmina Tesanovic is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tesanovic on BoingBoing:

Slaughter in the Monastery

Mermaid's Trail

A Burial in Srebenica
Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
To Hague, to Hague

Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties

Floods and Bombs


Scorpions Trial, April 13
The Muslim Women 
– Belgrade: New Normality
Serbia: An Underworld Journey
Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
The Long Goodbye
Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
Slobodan Milosevic Died
Milosevic Funeral