Editorial
October was not a good month for Russian human rights activists. On
7 October, Anna Politkovskaya, a well know journalist who regularly
exposed Russian human rights violations in Chechnya, was murdered in
her flat in Moscow. Six days later, on 13 October, the Russian Chechen
Friendship Society (RCFS) of Nizhnii Novgorod was ordered closed by a
local court, because the recently adopted NGO law makes it illegal for
an organisation to be headed by a person convicted of "extremist
activities". Amnesty International commented that Stanislav
Dmitrievskii, Executive Director of RCFS, was convicted on "race hate"
charges on 3 February 2006 for publishing non-violent articles by
Chechen separatist leaders, and was -- in view of AI -- convicted for
the peaceful exercise of his right of freedom of _expression_ and should
not have faced trial in the first place.
Only a few days later the military prosecutors in Chelyabinsk dropped
their investigation of four army officials accused of failing to stop
the hazing of army conscript Andrei Sychyov -- a case that received a
lot of public attention earlier this year because of the violence and
cruelty involved. While the person who beat him was sentenced on 26
September to four years imprisonment, no further action will now be
taken against those in charge of protecting conscripts.
These three unrelated new items shed some light on the situation in
Russia -- a situation which is getting worse, while Western leaders and
businesses increasingly make deals with Russia. Chechnya, and the
increasingly racist policy towards Caucasian citicens within Russia, is
Russia's "war on terror", and the silence of Western leaders is the
price paid for Russian cooperation in Bush's "war on terror". For us a
peace movement, however, it is important to not be silent about
Chechnya and Russian human rights violations, but to support peace and
human rights activists in Russia and Chechnya.
Andreas Speck
WRI Office
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Supporting peace and human
rights in Russia
On 7 October 2006, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was
murdered outside her flat in Moscow. This was not an isolated case --
several journalists have been killed in Russia in recent years -- and
it was not a coincidence that Anna Politkovskaya was the target.
Russia is the third deadliest country in the world for journalists over
the past 15 years, behind only the conflict-ridden countries of Iraq
and Algeria. A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
found that 42 journalists had been killed in Russia since 1992, many of
them slain in contract-style executions and the vast majority unsolved
by Russian authorities.
But Anna Politkovskaya was not only an oppositional journalist -- which
would have been dangerous enought in Russia. The focus of Anna
Politkovskaya's work was on the war in Chechnya, and human rights
violations by Russian forces in Chechnya, or against Chechnians living
in Russia. With this focus she had to touch on two central pillars of
Putin's power in Russia: the Russian military and security forces, and
Russia's war on terror in Chechnya.
Extremely insignificant?
President Putin responded to the murder of Anna Politkosvkaya only
when pressed to do so by journalists during a visit to Germany. He then
said: "However, the degree of her influence on the country's political
development ... was insignificant." If that would be true, why then was
she murdered?
Anna Politkovskaya has been threatened and attacked numerous times in
retaliation for her work. In February 2001 security agents detained her
in the Vedeno district in Chechnya, accusing her of entering Chechnya
without accreditation. She was kept in a pit for three days without
food or water, while a military officer threatened to shoot her. Seven
months later, she received death threats from a military officer
accused of crimes against civilians. She was forced to flee to Vienna
after the officer sent an e-mail to Novaya Gazeta promising that he
would seek revenge.
When she was killed, she was again working on a new story on human
rights violations in Chechnya. And obviously Putin would like this to
be "insignificant."
Not only journalists
And it's not only journalists. Only a few days after the murder of
Anna Politkovskaya, Russian authorities closed the Russian-Chechen
Friendship society in Nizhny Novgorod -- again, because it was
highlighting Russia's war on terror in Chechnya. Obviously, this is
just another attempt to silence dissent, following the introduction of
a new law on NGOs and civil society organisations. And the Guardian
reported on 19 October that several well-known international NGOs have
to cease their operations in Russia because they missed they deadline
for registration under the new law. However, this was often due to
bureaucratic delays. Until 18 October, only 91 out of up to 500
international NGOs had been approved by the Russian authorities -- the
remainder had to suspend their activities. Again, some of the NGOs
concerned are invovled in humanitarian aid in the North Caucasus -- in
Ingushetia or elsewhere, often providing humanitarian aid to Chechen
refugees.
A climate of violence
The killings of journalists and the crackdown on NGOs and civil
society groups happen in the context of rising violence against
minorities and political activists. In November 2005, two anarchists
were attacked by fascists in St Petersburg, leaving one of them dead,
the other one heavily injured. Especially Caucasians living in Russia
face racist attacks and abuse regularly. And the present escalation of
the conflict between Russia and Georgia -- with the deportation of
hundreds of Georgian citizens from Russia -- adds even further to
racist threads in violence within Russian society. Clearly, things are
not going well in Russia...
Andreas Speck
More information:
The Broken Rifle is the newsletter of War Resisters'
International, and is published in English, Spanish, French and German.
This is issue 72, November 2006.
This issue of The Broken Rifle was produced by Andreas Speck. Special
thanks go to everyone who provided the information used in this issue.
If you want extra copies of this issue of The Broken Rifle, please
contact the WRI office, or download it from our website.
War Resisters' International,
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London N1 9DX, Britain
tel +44-20-7278 4040
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info@wri-irg.org
http://wri-irg.org/pubs/br72-en.htm
