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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 4 (August 2001)
By Yevgenia Borisova
Staff Writer
Moscow Times
July 4, 2001
"Those who spoke openly to me, ignoring any [possible] consequences, are not alive any more," Politkovskaya wrote in Monday's issue of the newspaper.
"They disappeared. Were murdered. Their corpses were bought back [by their relatives]. - How I am supposed to live with all this?"
In February, Politkovskaya and Zeinap Gashayeva, co-founder of the Echo of War human-rights group based in Ingushetia, visited several villages in the mountainous Vedeno district, including Khatuni and Makhkety. Politkovskaya spoke to villagers and saw the deep pits at the 45th airborne unit, located near Khatuni, where they said people were held until ransom was paid. She then reported what she saw and heard.
In Monday's article, Politkovskaya listed the names of 15 civilians from four villages in the Vedeno district who were killed in April, May and June in what she believes was revenge for giving her information about atrocities committed by the military. Gashayeva, in an interview, added nine more names to the list.
"About 2 a.m. [on May 7] unknown people in masks came to the Khuguyevs' home and killed Yaragi Khuguyev, 52, his wife Markha Khuguyeva, 47, a local activist, and their son Akhyad Khuguyev, 17," Politkovskaya wrote. In an interview, she confirmed that Khuguyeva was among the people she had talked to.
Her article also gives the names of 21 people who were kidnapped after her visit, although it was not clear whether they were among those she had interviewed. To free someone who was kidnapped, or even retrieve the body of someone who died in military custody, relatives had to pay in cash or weapons, according to Politkovskaya.
There is nothing new in the idea of Chechens being held in pits. Saipudin Mumayev, a surgeon in Grozny's main hospital, said in an interview in April that many people with swollen legs, some with gangrene, come for treatment after spending days in deep pits with icy water.
But Politkovskaya is the only journalist who has succeeded in seeing them and writing about them. She said she walked into the 45th unit and persuaded the commander to show them to her. But as soon as she left, she was arrested at a checkpoint and held at a military unit for a few days.
She had gone to the Vedeno region to follow up on a letter signed by 90 local families, who asked to be relocated in part because they feared the paratroopers.
At a news conference after coming back to Moscow, Politkovskaya called for international protection for the 90 families.
"I was told by a deputy to Stanislav Ilyasov [head of the Chechen government] that I didn't need to worry about the people I wrote about, that they would be helped and assisted in their problems," Politkovskaya said in an interview Monday.
It was not clear how many of the villagers who Politkovskaya and Gashayeva say were killed were among those who signed the letter, which also was sent to authorities in Chechnya. The signatures are difficult to read and often have initials instead of first names.
After Novaya Gazeta printed Politkovskaya's article about the pits and following investigations by the Chechen military prosecutor's office and presidential human rights envoy Vladimir Kalamanov, Politkovskaya said people she had interviewed were called into the military commandant's office and warned not to talk about atrocities committed by federal troops.
After a few months of quiet, she said, the army got even with the people who complained. "What is going on in this country?" Politkovskaya wrote. "Death comes after talking with a journalist?"
Many of those who killed were among the most respected in their villages, she said. "Look, they killed activist Khuguyeva. … Also Sultan Arsakhanov, 56 - a retired Soviet army colonel, he was very much an authority in the Tevzani village whom people listened to - and a deputy school director from Tevzani, Ramzan Ilyasov, 56."
"What they want is for the rest of the people to be like cattle, just silently sitting in their barns," she said.
Although journalists try to protect their sources, and Politkovskaya used no last names in her report, the villages were too small and the Moscow reporter too conspicuous to prevent anyone from figuring out who had talked to her.
Alexei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Fund, said protection of sources is the most sensitive question for journalists, especially in Chechnya where "sources are so distinctive that even if they are not named, they are effectively revealed."
"Our journalists who write about human rights from this war are basically in a vicious circle," he said. "And this is Anna's personal tragedy."
Simonov said the real problem is that the state punishes the messenger rather than the one who is at fault. As further examples he cited the espionage cases against Alexander Nikitin and Grigory Pasko, who exposed environmental pollution caused by nuclear fleets and were jailed.
"What happened with the people whom Politkovskaya interviewed is proof that the irritation is caused not by those who murder and kidnap, but by those who revealed it," Simonov said.
But, he said, this does not mean journalists should not write about such things. "The most horrible thing is that if journalists don't write about it, the problem will never be addressed."
Pavel Gutiontov, secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists, agreed. "A journalist has no other way of fighting our deceitful and unjustifiably cruel system but by writing and counting on public opinion. But, unfortunately, our public opinion is silent on everything that is linked to Chechnya.
"Still, without such publications, our system has no chance of changing."