Natalia Estemirova’s body was found Wednesday morning in the neighboring province of Ingushetia, her hands tied and with gunshot wounds to the chest and head.
She had been kidnapped earlier that day in Grozny, the capital of the restive province of Chechnya, where she lived and worked.
She disappeared at 8:30 a.m., in front of her home, as several men were seen shoving her into a white Lada.
A researcher at the Russian human rights organization Memorial, she investigated abuses in Chechnya. She had been doing research on a series of house burnings, believed to have been committed by members of the local security apparatus, and part of a campaign to punish the relatives of Islamic militants, and to stamp out the rebel movement. On the day that she was murdered, a report she helped compile was issued. It claimed that sufficient evidence existed to prosecute senior Russian officials, including former president, and current prime minister, Putin.
Described by her friend, Tom Parfitt, of the Guardian, as one of the bravest people in Russia, she had been doggedly investigating human rights abuses since 1999, the beginning of the second war in Chechnya, and provided essential information to organizations such as Human Rights Watch.
She worked in a little office in central Grozny, near (of all places) Putin Avenue.
There, she received, daily, scores of mothers, sisters and relatives of those who have been tortured, murdered, or had simply disappeared in the campaign waged by the authorities to crush the Islamic rebel movement.
The BBC journalist, Lucy Ash, who recently met with Natalia Estemirova in Grozny, described her working environment thus:
Much of Natalia's work concerned unexplained disappearances. According to officials there are currently 5,000 people missing in Chechnya - but the real number could be much higher.
On the couple of occasions that I visited Natalia's Memorial office, it was filled with people patiently waiting their turn, all clutching tattered documents - all with the same desperate look in their eyes.
"I'll be lucky if I get out of here before 10 o'clock," said Natalia, her face grey with exhaustion.
The crimes, never elucidated, are widely believed to have been the grizzly work of the paramilitaries controlled by the local government, and its president, Ramzan Kadyrov, a 32-year-old former rebel who is now Moscow’s protégé, the son of the previous president, assassinated in 2004.
Memorial’s chairman Oleg Orlov had no doubt as to who was responsible for this latest killing: I know, I am sure of it, who is guilty for the murder of Natalia ... His name is Ramzan Kadyrov. Ramzan already threatened Natalia, insulted her, considered her a personal enemy.
Kadyrov and his paramilitaries, known as kadyrovtsy, have succeeded in restoring a semblance of order in Chechnya, but only by resorting to the most brutal of means.
According to Parfitt, he brooks no dissent in his republic, and the kadyrovtsy have repeatedly been accused of torture, kidnappings and extra-judicial killings.
Those who have had the boldness to investigate these crimes have paid a dire price.
The journalist Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated in 2006 in her Moscow apartment building, (on Putin’s birthday! Was it his birthday present?) after she had exposed the involvement of Kadyrov in a series of heinous crimes, and in particular, those committed by Sergei Lapin, a Chechnyan policeman…
Stanislas Markelov, a human rights lawyer, was gunned down January 15th, along with an aide, Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old journalist. Markelov was working on a case involving the killing of a young Chechnyan woman by a Russian officer, Yuri Budanov.
In addition, Kadyrov’s main political opponent, Sulim Yamadayev, a former commander in the Russian Army, was assassinated last March in Dubai.
Umar Israilov, a former presidential bodyguard, who had publicly accused Kadyrov of having tortured him, was murdered in Vienna last January…
With no opponents or rivals, Kadyrov, to quote Parfitt, has transformed the republic into a personal fiefdom with full support from Moscow and his patrons, MM. Putin and Medvedev.
In all likelihood, therefore, Mr. Kadyrov is responsible for the murder of Natalia Estemirova, as well as as the assassinations of those who seek to establish some accountability for the terrible crimes committed in Chechnya over the years.
But he is not the sole responsible party. For, he serves at the pleasure of MM Putin and Medvedev.
The Gestapo tactics he has used to restore order have been fully endorsed by both leaders.
Memorial’s chairman added: the highest officials of Russia in recent years and today — including Putin and Medvedev — are to blame for the creation in Chechnya of a climate of permissiveness, impunity and the carrying out of massive, grave crimes by representatives of the state.
Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the human rights organization the Moscow Helsinki Group added: I blame both of them for the killing — for involvement in the killing.
The Secretary General of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, came to the same conclusion: Natalia Estemirova's murder is a consequence of the impunity that has been allowed to persist by the Russian and Chechen authorities.
Naturally, the accused deny any involvement. Mr. Kadyrov, who has called the assassination a monstrous crime, vowed to supervise the murder investigation himself.
President Medvedev actually praised the victim: Estemirova was doing a very useful thing — she was telling the truth, she was making open, at times perhaps harsh, assessments of some of the processes that are under way in the country. That is why human rights activists are valuable, even if those in authority find them inconvenient and unpleasant.
This is a positive reaction indeed, when compared to former President Putin’s after the Anna Politkovskaya murder, the significance and importance of which he had publicly belittled.
And yet, none of the assassinations mentioned above have been solved…No one, no one at all, has paid for having murdered human rights activists and journalists.
It is difficult, hence, to take Mr. Medvedev’s words seriously.
His previous inaction and lack of interest in these cases are much more eloquent.
If telling the truth is important, if exposing the unconscionable processes that are under way in the country, is useful, than we are entitled to expect that Mr. Medvedev will at long last break with the Putin era, and his scorched earth policies, and that justice and the rule of law will finally prevail on Russian soil.
It is Mr. Medvedev’s responsibility to ensure that those who murdered Natalia Estemirova, Anna Politkovskaya and all the others, are brought to justice and pay for what they have done, particularly in Chechnya…
Natalia Estemirova, Anna Politkovskaya did not deserve to die the way that they did, and if the word justice has a Russian equivalent, then they will not have died for nothing…
(the photograph is by Musa Sadulayev/AP)
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire