Read some sad news today: The renowned Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was found murdered in a lift on Saturday, the 7th of October, believed to have been killed by a man “in his twenties dressed in a black cap, seen just before neighbours discovered her body in the lift”.

Her next article was believed to have been about Ramzan Kadyrov, current Chechen PM and son of former Chechen President, Akhmad Kadyrov. Ramzan has long been a favourite of Moscow, and has had numerous human-rights groups coming out against him as a war criminal. After a video clip of Ramzan with prostitutes was recently posted on a Chechen separatist website, Anna Politkovskaya commented that:

[Ramazan Kadyrov] is an uneducated, country person, and nothing more. But the fact is that gossip about his sexual adventures, particularly in Moscow clubs, has been around for a long time. Basically, it is not gossip, but completely well-founded descriptionsâ??including by some of my acquaintances who go to menâ??s clubsâ??about how they saw Ramzan there, and in whose company he was there. These are generally big Moscow Chechen businessmen with well-known last names. But his sexual adventures cannot interest me at all, because this is decided by each person for himself and his wife and doesnâ??t concern anyone else. And Ramzan Kadyrov is by no means alone in sinning like a hypocrite in this area. A great many frequent bath-houses with prostitutes, and later make all kinds of lofty moral speeches and urge women to be pure: I am not surprised by this.

When I saw [Kadyrov] the last time, his whole inner circle personally bragged to me: look at the mobile phone that I have, look how wonderfully it shoots video. And, later, film [clips] started to be sent to meâ?¦On them were the murders of federal servicemen by kadyrovtsy [Kadyrov’s private army], and also kidnappings directed by Kadyrov. These are very serious things; on the basis of them, a criminal case and investigation should follow. These could allow this person to be brought to justice, which he has long richly deserved. The people who made these films are exposed to extreme danger, because judging by the character of the films, they are really close to him.

Anna Politkovskaya is the latest in a long line of journalists to have been murdered for speaking out against the corrupt Russian system, its “gangster capitalism”, business leaders and politicians: journalist Magomedzagid Varisov was killed on the 28th of June 2005, Tagib Abdusamadov in June 2004, and Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov on July 9th, 2004. There have been many others. The independent Reporters Without Borders that supports press freedom around the world wrote in their 2006 Annual report on Russia that:

Working conditions for journalists continued to worsen alarmingly in 2005, with violence the most serious threat to press freedom. The independent press is shrinking because of crippling fines and politically-inspired distribution of government advertising. The authoritiesâ?? refusal to accredit foreign journalists showed the governmentâ??s intent to gain total control of news, especially about the war in Chechnya.

I first read about Anna Politkovskaya in the Guardian where she was interviewed by James Meek, and one could only admire her for her optimism, stength and bravery in covering the Chechen war, reporting on “kidnappings, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, rapes and tortures” and not parroting the Russian government’s statements covering up the massive war crimes being committed in Chechnya by their troops. Writing in the Washington Post, she revealed that Russia was again “using Stalin’s methods” to “fight terrorism”:

Here is one example of how it’s done. Recently two young college students from the Chechen capital of Grozny — Musa Lomayev and Mikhail Vladovskikh — were accused by the police and the prosecutor’s office of all small, previously unsolved acts of terrorism that had occurred about six months before in one of Grozny’s residential areas. As a result, Vladovskikh is now severely disabled: Both his legs were broken under torture; his kneecaps were shattered; his kidneys badly damaged by beating; his genitalia mutilated; his eyesight lost; his eardrums torn; and all of his front teeth sawed off. That is how he appeared before the court.

To get Lomayev to sign — and he did sign confessions for five acts of terrorism — they inserted electrical wires in his anus and applied current. He would lose consciousness, and they would pour water on him, show him the wires again, turn him around backward — and he would sign confessions that he belonged to a gang with Vladovskikh. This despite the fact that the two defendants were first introduced to one another by their prison torturers.

As she told James Meek, “The truth is that the methods employed in Putin’s anti-terrorist operation are generating a wave of terrorism the like of which we have never experienced. … The Russian government created these beasts, brought them up, and they came to Beslan and behaved like beasts.” It was this type of frank, direct talking that landed her in trouble more than once. She has received numerous death threats from all manner of people before, and was forced to relocate to Vienna for a while. In 2004, when she went to try and negotiate for the release of hostages from Beslan by talking directly to Chechen seperatist leader, Aslan Maskhadov, she was poisoned with a cup of tea believed to have been carried out by the notorious Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). Almost prophetically, she wrote at the time, “if you want to go on working as a journalist, it’s total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial - whatever our special services, Putin’s guard dogs, see fit.”

As a result of reading several online news articles and interviews with her, I purchased her book, Putin’s Russia, in order to try and gain a better understanding of Russian politics, their War on Terror, and the rise of the powerful oligarchs and other business leaders that raped Russia for their own personal gain after the fall of the USSR and helped it along its steady decline in living standards. It remains one of my favourite books, an example of pure, humane journalism, listening to the voices of the voiceless, and pulling back the deep layers of deception and lies that have been a trademark of Putin’s Russia. As she remarks in the introduction:

This book is not an analysis of Putin’s politics. I am not a political analyst. I am just one human being among many, a face in the crowd in Moscow, Chechnya, St Petersburg and elsewhere. These are my emotional reactions, jotted down in the margins of life as it is lived in Russia today. It is too soon to stand back, as you must if you want to analyse anything dispassionately. I live in the present, noting down what I see.

It’s difficult for me to express the seriousness of her death, and the incredible sadness we should all feel. It’s like hearing of the assassination of Nelson Mandela, or waking up one morning to find out that Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk, or another steadfast, firm voice has been silenced by the very senseless deeds they’ve long tried to expose. One of the last, lonely voices in the Russian wilderness has stopped shouting for our attention, and I can only hope that the silence will deafen us so much that we will finally listen. But I suspect that Western governments, themselves engaged in their “War on Terror”, conducting their own atrocities and often requiring Russian support - something Ana Politkovskaya also spoke out against - will do or say very little in response. Instead, Putin will stand shoulder to shoulder with Bush and Blair, shaking their hands, all of them smiling. Birds of a feather, indeed.