the murder of a journalist
This is the best article I've read so far about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, although Edward Lucas also wrote a good obit, which was published in the Economist Global Agenda.
Both have far more knowledgeable and insightful perspectives to offer than I could attempt, but to tell the truth, the killing really got to me.
It sounds false and affected to say that a political murder touched something in me, but it did.
Maybe it's because she was someone who paid for her unceasing fight to let the truth be known with the ultimate price. Maybe it's because the suffocating regime of Putin's Russia has impacted upon the lives of people I've met, people who have fled the horrors of Chechnya to the bleak prospects Poland has to offer. Maybe it's because the thought that a prominent journalist, whose articles uncovered crimes, corruption and violence, could be silenced forever so simply, so coldly, so finally.
She's not the first to be killed for what she believed and how she worked, but to think the selflessness of her actions was rewarded with a bullet is just plain unfair.
The world's a bleaker place. Hitmen working for criminals with power are winning against the selfless champions of the importance of human life.
Both have far more knowledgeable and insightful perspectives to offer than I could attempt, but to tell the truth, the killing really got to me.
It sounds false and affected to say that a political murder touched something in me, but it did.
Maybe it's because she was someone who paid for her unceasing fight to let the truth be known with the ultimate price. Maybe it's because the suffocating regime of Putin's Russia has impacted upon the lives of people I've met, people who have fled the horrors of Chechnya to the bleak prospects Poland has to offer. Maybe it's because the thought that a prominent journalist, whose articles uncovered crimes, corruption and violence, could be silenced forever so simply, so coldly, so finally.
She's not the first to be killed for what she believed and how she worked, but to think the selflessness of her actions was rewarded with a bullet is just plain unfair.
The world's a bleaker place. Hitmen working for criminals with power are winning against the selfless champions of the importance of human life.
posted by Becca | 9:42 am
3 Comments:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_lloyd/2006/10/post_495.html thought this might be of interest to you
I'm curious to know what you think of folks like the Accidental Russophile, who are repeating in the wake of the killing claims of Russian nationalists that Anna made up her stories based on no authority other than the pro-Kremlin propaganda rag Izvestia. Do you think these folks are as bad as the killers? Worse? Any ideas on how to stop them?
Thanks Claire.
la russophobe, I think it's a very good thing that Accidental Russophile wrote the two sides to the story - western journalists praising her honest open writing and many inside Russia dismissing her as creating fiction. To be honest, it's only to be expected in such a system of press control.
Freedom of speech involves everyone saying what they believe - people looking for the truth about her only have to read her stories, gather the opinions of others and come to their own conclusions.
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