The truth must be told
The Herald
9 October 06
Editorial Comment
Anna Politkovskaya's death was not entirely a surprise, and that makes it all the more shocking.
Neighbours who found the body of the Russian journalist did not need the pistol and four bullets beside it to tell them this was a contract killing. Suspicion has already fallen on the Kremlin, but Politkovskaya had many enemies who will rejoice that she has been silenced.
Her mission was to tell the truth, and she did it by talking to ordinary people and revealing in painstaking detail, much of it painful to read, how the people of the former Soviet Union are bullied, cheated and sometimes killed by those in power.
Her fearless reports, particularly about abuses in Chechnya, for Novaya Gazeta – a newspaper started in the euphoria of Glasnost, and one of the few not under state control – had already resulted in her being held in a pit for three days and later poisoned, most probably in an attempt to kill her.
That was two years ago, when she was on her way to the school in Beslan in North Ossetia where children had been taken hostage. Unable to get a flight anywhere near the area, she jumped at the offer of a flight to Rostov-on-Don as a staging-post. She accepted a cup of tea on the flight, and within minutes had lost consciousness. The poison, from which she never completely recovered, has never been identified, but it did not stop her. Asked why she carried on in the face of such danger, she would answer simply and directly: "It's my duty."
She explained that this sense of duty pushed her to "try to help everyone who asks me". It wasn't easy. She admitted to being afraid and to wanting to live. It wasn't glamorous. The people who asked her for help were poor and powerless – parents whose daughter had been raped and murdered by an army colonel, mothers whose soldier sons were unaccounted for, a wife whose husband had been mysteriously shot.
To tell the truth was not just her profession; it was her calling. There was, however, a very particular calling to tell the truth about her country. It was her passion for Russia which drove her "to give one part of my huge country information about what happens in the other parts, because the official mass media … transmit official information", as she told The Herald just weeks after the poisoning episode.
Today Novaya Gazeta was due to publish her latest report about torture in Chechnya. Instead, its website is full of tributes. She wasn't fearless. Quite the opposite: she had the much rarer courage to face the fear that her enemies would kill her. Her death should remind us all that a free press is essential. Moscow's chief prosecutor is treating her death as murder, but he must be held to account. The truth she sought so bravely and chronicled so patiently must not be allowed to escape into bureaucratic cover-up.
9 October 06
Editorial Comment
Anna Politkovskaya's death was not entirely a surprise, and that makes it all the more shocking.
Neighbours who found the body of the Russian journalist did not need the pistol and four bullets beside it to tell them this was a contract killing. Suspicion has already fallen on the Kremlin, but Politkovskaya had many enemies who will rejoice that she has been silenced.
Her mission was to tell the truth, and she did it by talking to ordinary people and revealing in painstaking detail, much of it painful to read, how the people of the former Soviet Union are bullied, cheated and sometimes killed by those in power.
Her fearless reports, particularly about abuses in Chechnya, for Novaya Gazeta – a newspaper started in the euphoria of Glasnost, and one of the few not under state control – had already resulted in her being held in a pit for three days and later poisoned, most probably in an attempt to kill her.
That was two years ago, when she was on her way to the school in Beslan in North Ossetia where children had been taken hostage. Unable to get a flight anywhere near the area, she jumped at the offer of a flight to Rostov-on-Don as a staging-post. She accepted a cup of tea on the flight, and within minutes had lost consciousness. The poison, from which she never completely recovered, has never been identified, but it did not stop her. Asked why she carried on in the face of such danger, she would answer simply and directly: "It's my duty."
She explained that this sense of duty pushed her to "try to help everyone who asks me". It wasn't easy. She admitted to being afraid and to wanting to live. It wasn't glamorous. The people who asked her for help were poor and powerless – parents whose daughter had been raped and murdered by an army colonel, mothers whose soldier sons were unaccounted for, a wife whose husband had been mysteriously shot.
To tell the truth was not just her profession; it was her calling. There was, however, a very particular calling to tell the truth about her country. It was her passion for Russia which drove her "to give one part of my huge country information about what happens in the other parts, because the official mass media … transmit official information", as she told The Herald just weeks after the poisoning episode.
Today Novaya Gazeta was due to publish her latest report about torture in Chechnya. Instead, its website is full of tributes. She wasn't fearless. Quite the opposite: she had the much rarer courage to face the fear that her enemies would kill her. Her death should remind us all that a free press is essential. Moscow's chief prosecutor is treating her death as murder, but he must be held to account. The truth she sought so bravely and chronicled so patiently must not be allowed to escape into bureaucratic cover-up.
posted by Sean M. Madden at
11:56 AM
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