Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (3 page)

At first I was very angry and thought that if Shabalkin had been in our shoes he would have had a different tale to tell. Then I calmed down and started to feel sorry for the man. “They” in Khankala have a hard life: they have to run around like servants whose masters are in a bad mood in the morning because their boots haven’t been properly polished. It’s really not that easy to talk about places you have never been to and things you have never seen, and to make it look as if you are doing a great job and do know everything that’s going on. You and I would blow our brains out rather than jump through hoops like those but Shabalkin, poor sod, plods on. So we are more fortunate, having seen everything with our own eyes and not having to pretend. Although we are not happier when we think about what it is we have seen.

How are things in Shatoy? Have they given up sending helicopters from Khankala to catch wounded Khattabs? How is Victor Malchukov getting on, the Shatoy Military Commandant who long ago saw the reality of what is going on around him,
a man with haunted eyes? It must be difficult for you. I have an easier time here in Moscow, deflecting the attacks of idiots. It’s a piece of cake by comparison with the mountains.

Anna Politkovskaya

Around me my family are grim-faced. I am flying out to Chechnya again, only I won’t be meeting up with Vitaliy. I have other plans.

THE SAGA OF ANNA’S ASSIGNMENT IN SHATOY

February 14, 2002

On January, 11 2002, in what Army Headquarters officially described as an operation to capture the Chechen resistance leader, Khattab, soldiers of the Central Intelligence Directorate (GRU) murdered and burned the bodies of six civilians. Anna went to investigate
.

I take out the tape of my last assignment in Chechnya, and at the same time read through the newspapers and the news agency tapes.

Well, well. My colleagues seem to have been competing to see who could come up with the most unfounded stories. According to our esteemed Interfax news agency, I was detained on February 9, by the Shatoy District Military Commandant’s Office during a special operation there because I did not have the necessary documents. It seems to concern nobody that there was no special operation in Shatoy, either immediately before, on, or after February 9.

As I read on, the tone gets more caustic. It seems I escaped from the Commandant’s Office and disappeared, thereby discrediting … I should be punished just where it hurts … The Press Office of the Joint Military Command in Chechnya fulminates that by my misconduct I have brought disgrace upon all journalists.

What actually happened was that on February 8, the second day of my assignment, having made my way from Grozny to Shatoy, my first act, making no attempt at concealment, was to go directly to Sultan Mahomadov, the Director of the District Interior Affairs Office, and
inform him of the purpose of my assignment: to investigate one of the most scandalous and tragic recent events in Chechnya, the extra-judicial execution and burning of the bodies of six civilians who were returning from Shatoy to their homes in the hill village of Nokhchi-Keloy on January 10, 2002. From the militia I went to the office of the District Administration and, as required, asked them to put a stamp confirming my arrival on my assignment papers. They duly did so.

From the District Administration I set off to the District Military Commandant’s Office, to see the Commandant, Colonel Victor Malchukov. Why did I go to see him? Because, quite simply, I have known him for a long time, and respect his ability to talk to people in the villages, thereby resolving innumerable conflicts which arise between the Army and the civilian population.

We sat together and worked out a plan of how I could best do the job my newspaper had entrusted me with. The Colonel said that he had to fly to a meeting in Khankala the next morning, so alas there was a limit to the help he could give me.

My journalistic colleagues reported that I had been “detained,” and had “escaped.” This was complete nonsense, although admittedly only in respect of February 8, before the FSB piled in. By February 9, it was already clear that the massacre near the village of Dai in Shatoy District by soldiers of the elite special division of the Central Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence had its roots, as people in Chechnya say, in Army Headquarters in Khankala.

At 11:00 a.m. on February 9, I had arranged an interview with Colonel Andrey Vershinin, the Military Prosecutor for Shatoy District, who is presently conducting a criminal investigation into the executions, and whose office is located within the headquarters of 291 Regiment, near the village of Barzoy, a few kilometres from Shatoy. The Military Prosecutor quite properly scrupulously checked all my documents, and then gave me a long interview in which he was as frank as it is possible to be while a case has yet to come before the courts. My sincere thanks to Colonel Vershinin. He is a terrific person to have in that job. We parted on friendly terms.

The surprises began immediately after this. During the interview,
I discovered, my militia security officers had been questioned by FSB agents about me. What were they after? Why? Who gave them permission? Officers I did not know approached me, said they were well-wishers, and quietly advised me to get out of the regiment quickly, warning that preparations were being made to detain me, and that the FSB was categorically opposed to journalists sticking their noses into this case, which involved military commanders right at the top.

This was the moment when my “disappearance” began; a change of cars, covering my tracks, searching for a place to sleep where no one would find me. There were many signs that this was far from a joke, and that it was vitally important to behave in just this manner. I very much wanted to stay alive and to get back home, in the face of a manhunt mounted by men armed to the teeth and with malice in their hearts. For this reason I had to dissolve in time and space, and not, as my press colleagues and the Khankala ideologists were shortly to write, in order to create a fuss and draw attention to myself.

Early in the morning of February 10, I slipped on foot into Starye Atagi, heavily disguised, avoiding checkpoints and the security sweep which was beginning in the neighbouring village of Chiri-Yurt. Moving very quietly, almost crawling on the ground, my main concern was not to attract any attention in order not to be killed. Escaping from Shatoy and from rabid FSB agents was only half the problem. Getting into Starye Atagi, which is now in the hands of the Wahhabis, was the next challenge. No federal soldiers or representatives of the new Chechen government walk the streets. They are very, very afraid of being killed. It’s only journalists and human rights activists covertly collecting information who creep about like this, because journalists like me have no option, given how things have worked out in Chechnya, other than to keep a very low profile.

Perhaps you will think that this is playing at spies, that it amounts to militaristic thrill-seeking. Nothing of the sort. I hate this way of life. The situation created by the security agencies in Chechnya, and primarily by members of the FSB and Ministry of Defence, is so disgusting it makes me sick; a situation where a journalist’s legitimate wish to be in possession of the full facts about an event results in direct threats to
her life. What was I doing during those two days in Shatoy? My work, for heaven’s sake, no more than that. Believe me, there is nothing more hateful than, in your own country, to feel that you are a target for shooting practice for parasites living it up, eating and drinking at your – a taxpayer’s – expense. And then they have the gall to denigrate you.

Traditionally journalists do not write about how they get their facts. The reader’s attention should be focused only on those facts themselves. That is entirely proper. Forgive me that today I have had to deviate from that ideal, reluctantly finding myself on the receiving end of a barrage of lies and conjecture.

A detailed report of my assignment in Shatoy will appear in the next issue. This will be the result of an investigation into the brutal murder of six civilians in Shatoy District, and I shall say no more about how I came by the facts. Only today, before I bring down the curtain, I will allow myself a few conclusions about the events which surrounded this inquiry.

In the first place, conditions for journalists working in Chechnya have been made completely impossible. I mean in terms of obtaining comprehensive information about an event.

In the second place, the unjustified, barefaced lies of the Army Command, passed on by most of the media without any attempt to check them out, are at the core of the world we now live in. More and more we are allowing ourselves to be brainwashed. It is a world where the Russian Army is encouraged to hunt civilians, including journalists, but not the terrorist leader Khattab.

And in the third place, many of my journalist colleagues, dancing to the tune of the state authorities and the Army top brass, are today prepared to do anything required of them, to report interviews without worrying about the truth, to write about scandals even when there are none, and all in order to avoid having to confront directly the fratricidal tragedy being perpetrated in Chechnya. That is what really matters about the mishaps which befell me on my last assignment, and which ended on February 12.

Anna Politkovskaya

FROM THE EDITORS

Novaya gazeta
thanks General Victor Kazantsev, Plenipotentiary Presidential Representative in the Southern Federal Region, and many others for responding to our request to assist in the search for our special correspondent, Anna Politkovskaya.

We thank the Directorate of Personal Security of the Interior Ministry of the Russian Federation, and also the Secretariat of Presidential Aide Sergey Yastrzhembsky for helping to establish the whereabouts of our special correspondent after the incident in the Shatoy district of Chechnya.

IS JOURNALISM WORTH DYING FOR?

November 10, 2003

Is journalism worth dying for? Every time something like the events on the evening of November 3 in Ryazan happen – and in Russia attempts to kill journalists are no rarity – we, the servants and slaves of information, ask ourselves this question. If the price of truth is so high, perhaps we should just stop, and find a profession with less risk of “major unpleasantness”? How much would society, for whose sake we are doing this work, care? In the face of that, each of us makes his or her own choice.

On November 3, 2003, at approximately 2104 hours, at the entrance to residential block No. 26, Zubkova Street in Ryazan, an attempt was made on the life of 30-year-old Mikhail Komarov, Deputy Editor of the Ryazan edition of
Novaya gazeta
. As he was returning home he was struck from behind on the head with a heavy blunt instrument. Komarov’s reporting is well known in Ryazan, and in recent years he has specialised in investigative journalism, some of it delving into the commercial activities of the local oligarchs.

At night all the dormitory districts of Russian towns are as alike as identical twins. Their kinship is in the darkness which descends on them, in which you can kill a person, unseen and unhindered, and then escape without repercussions.

It is not yet late on November 4, the day after the assassination attempt,
but as usual you can’t see a thing in the Ryazan suburb of Dashkovo-Pesochnoye. The district itself does not really seem to exist. Zubkova Street, “Broadway,” can only be sensed, immersed in the darkness of non-being. You can only feel that somewhere nearby is habitation. All the conditions for a successful hit are there. We grope our way along, guided by Valentina Komarova, Mikhail’s mother, who is shocked by what has happened. She has two sons. The younger, Dima, is 20 years old and a promising footballer. Her elder, Mikhail, “has turned out like his grandmother,” Valentina explains, with a mixture of pride and fear. “She was a truth-teller too. She survived the war and is still fighting to this day, although she is 80. She doesn’t give in, and she’s penniless. Misha is the same. How many times have I begged him, ‘Don’t, son. Let them live their lives, and we will live ours.’ At work people kept telling me, ‘This is going to end badly.’ There, we’ve arrived. This is our entrance, No. 14.”

It was on these steps that two people in black woollen hats and leather jackets, the uniform of Russian hitmen, were waiting for Mikhail. The neighbours spotted them but, as is the way, thought nothing of it. “As long as I’m all right, as long as it’s not me they’re beating up, everything is fine.” Here is the staircase the journalist crawled up, leaving a trail of blood, in order to escape his would-be killers. Today, just like yesterday, all the doors are firmly shut. The entrance is well adapted for murder, with dark corners in which you are your own rescue service, your own pyramid of power, prosecutor and militia.

Incidentally, the October District militia station is just round the corner. Actually, it is world famous because it was near here that, also in the darkness which is a friend not only of hitmen but also of the FSB, in the autumn of 1999 the Ryazan Directorate of the Federal Security Bureau was caught red-handed planting explosives in an apartment block just before the resumption of the Chechen War, the so-called hexogen “sugar” training exercise.
^*

“Have you heard that somebody made an attempt on the life of the
journalist Mikhail Komarov in your district yesterday?” I ask some young militiamen anxiously peeping out of the door.

“Yes. We’ve just seen it on television.”

“This kind of thing must often happen here, since you’re taking it so calmly?”

“No, this is the first time,” Vitaliy Vyazkov, duty officer at the station, says, not turning a hair.

Early morning on November 5. On Wednesdays the October District Militia have an inspection parade. Some of the militiamen have not bothered to go to it and are smoking by the door, discussing the attempt to kill Komarov. “He should have kept his head down,” a woman smoking a cigarette mutters. The others agree.