Sunday, November 18, 2012

Putin's Russia.


Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (Russian: А́нна Степа́новна Политко́вская; Ukrainian: Га́нна Степа́нівна Політко́вська; 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was an American journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and President of Russia Vladimir Putin.On 7 October 2006 she was shot and killed in the lift of her block of flats, an unsolved assassination that continues to attract international attention.

Politkovskaya was known by reporting on Chechnya, where many journalists and aid workers had been kidnapped or killed. She was arrested and subjected to a mock execution by Russian military forces. In addition, she was poisoned on the way to Beslan, but survived and continued to report. He wrote several books on both Chechen wars and on Putin's Russia and received numerous international awards for his work.



After Politkovskaya became widely known in the West, she was commissioned to write Putin's Russia (later subtitled Life in a Failing Democracy), a broader account of her views and experiences after former KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin became Boris Yeltsin's Prime Minister, and then succeeded him as President of Russia. This included Putin's pursuit of the Second Chechen War. In the book, she accused the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) of stifling all civil liberties in order to establish a Soviet-style dictatorship, but admitted
[It] is we who are responsible for Putin's policies ... [s]ociety has shown limitless apathy ... [a]s the Chekists have become entrenched in power, we have let them see our fear, and thereby have only intensified their urge to treat us like cattle. The KGB respects only the strong. The weak it devours. We of all people ought to know that.
She also wrote:
We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, 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.


 Politkovskaya wrote many articles critical of the war in Chechnya described abuses committed by Russian military forces by Chechen rebels and the Russian-backed Chechen administration.

Russian officials and Chechen separatists have regularly and repeatedly accused the opposing side of committing various war crimes including kidnapping, murder, hostage taking, looting, rape, and assorted other breaches of the laws of war.

We cannot ignore the fact that thousands of Chechen civilians have died and more than 200,000 have been driven from their homes. Together with other delegations, we have expressed our alarm at the persistent, credible reports of human rights violations by Russian forces in Chechnya, including extrajudicial killings. 


Putin's Hidden War - Chechnya


For Chechen civilians, Russia's 'clean-up' operations amounts to little more than genocide. Even Russian soldiers condemn their actions in Chechnya.



Second Chechen War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Her murder, which occurred on "Vladimir Putin's birthday", was widely perceived as a contract killing, sparking a strong international reaction:




 In 2007, they published "A Russian Diary: A final count of a journalist's life, death and corruption in Putin's Russia" edited extracts from his notebook and other writings, in which he describes the poisoning in Rostov flight path to Beslan and worsening political situation in Russia.  

 Because the gunman who shot him twice in the head and a third time in the shoulder in the elevator of her apartment 15 on the birthday of President Vladimir Putin-performed the shot 'as he was completing the translation, editing end should go ahead without him, 'writes in a footnote the translator of the English version, Arch Tait. "Who killed Anna and who allowed it, and behind the murderer remains unknown" type news presenter Jon Snow in the preface to the English edition of book. 


Assassination of Anna Politkovskaya - Wikipedia




Trailer of the documentary film "Letter To Anna" by Eric Bergkraut 


The full documentary film "Letter To Anna" 


Swiss director Eric Bergkraut's documentary about well-known Ukranian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. "Letter to Anna" is about Politkovskaya's life and death. It includes interviews with her son Ilya, her daughter Vera, her ex-husband Alexander Politkovsky, and others—such as film-maker Andrei Nekrasov.

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