I was deeply saddened to learn of the brutal assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, Russian’s most famous investigative journalist. She was returning home from a shopping trip when she was gunned down in the lift of her apartment block in Moscow. It was an apparent ruthless contract killing.
She was a fearless. grey-haired woman of 48 whose only weapon was the truth. Despite repeated death threats, she was unstoppable. She was one of the few Russian journalists who dared to write critically about widespread human rights abuses and war crimes in Chechnya. She won international acclaim for her reports but was hated by many in Russia’s security forces. She once described President Vladimir Putin as a “KGB snoop” and compared him to Stalin. She naturally made enemies.
She was deeply affected by the atrocities she witnessed, haunted by the suffering of innocent victims. To her, reporting was far more than a job — she saw it as a moral obligation. Unlike most reporters, she often crossed the line between journalism and personal involvement. At the height of the bombing of Chechnya, she once bravely negotiated the safe passage of dozens of elderly civilians trapped in Grozny, the Chechen capital.
She was a defenceless woman killed by a cold-blooded armed coward wearing a black baseball cap. Let’s hope the international condemnation of Anna’s brutal murder will inspire other Russian journalists to continue where she left off, I’m sure that’s what she would have wanted, the truth is the most powerful weapon of all.
