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.

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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