Memorial events in Washington recall 'lonely hero' Politkovskaya (10/22/06)

Memorial events in Washington recall 'lonely hero' Politkovskaya

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - The "lonely hero," as Zbigniew Brzezinski called journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was honored here at two memorial events, nine days after she was murdered in Moscow on October 7.

The former national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter was among those who spoke at a memorial gathering at the National Endowment for Democracy, recalling and honoring Ms. Politkovskaya and her unrelenting effort to keep the tragedy and travesty of what the Russian government of President Vladimir Putin was doing to Chechnya from being forgotten.

Later, in the evening, there was a candlelight vigil in her memory in front of the Russian Embassy.

"There is no heroism more impressive than lonely heroism," Dr. Brzezinski said, speaking to a gathering of some 200 of her friends, colleagues and admirers who came to honor her memory.

"To stand for something transcendental, to stand for something utterly good amidst silence, indifference, hostility, cowardice, opportunism - that is heroism," he said. "That is very special heroism."

Dr. Brzezinski chastised America for demonstrating a "moral indifference" to what has been happening in Chechnya and, thereby, being complicit to its tragedy. He pointed out that since 1995 neither President Bill Clinton nor President George W. Bush has "explicitly condemned the crimes committed in Chechnya. Instead, he said, the United States has "increasingly fuzzed over the Chechen issue with the war on terror, making it easier for Mr. Putin to say what he's been saying and worse, to do what he has been doing."

Also honoring Ms. Politkovskaya at the memorial was U.S. Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, who called her "one of the bravest and most respected investigative journalists in Russia."

"She embodied fully the role of the journalist in a free society: to bring the truth, especially about difficult issues, to the citizens of her country," Dr. Dobriansky said.

She noted that Ms. Politkovskaya was not the first or only Russian journalist to be killed in "contract-style murders" in Russia. Twelve others preceded her, which has had a "chilling effect" on media freedom in Russia, she said.

"For the sake of Russia and freedom in Russia, I hope that Anna Politkovskaya's death - and the memory of all that she achieved in her short but extremely accomplished life will not have been in vain," Dr. Dobriansky underscored.

A few days after Ms. Politkovskaya was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building, the newspaper for which she worked, Novaya Gazeta, published portions of the next report she was working on. It included excerpts from a letter written by a Beslan Gadayev, a Chechen nationalist detained in August in Crimea and handed over to Russia, which turned him over to the pro-Russian regime in Grozny, where he was tortured.

Mariana Katzarova, who had worked with Ms. Politkovskaya in investigating incidents of torture in Chechnya, mentioned the Gadayev torture letter in her remarks. She also noted that her killers helped achieve one of Anna Politkovskaya's goals.

"Chechnya is back in the news around the world these days. It took the killing of Anna to break the silence over Chechnya," she said. "But how long will that last?"

Also speaking at the memorial were NED President Carl Gershman, Don Jensen of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Andrei Piontkovsky and David Satter of the Hudson Institute, Susan Glasser of the Washington Post, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and Ilyas Akhmadov, the former foreign minister of Chechnya.

The memorial program included the showing of a video interview with Ms. Politkovskaya taken a few months earlier. It will be part of a PBS documentary, "Democracy on Deadline," about journalists working in dangerous places around the world. It is scheduled to air on the "Independent Lens" program on November 21.

The evening candlelight vigil, which brought together more than 100 people in front of the Russian Embassy's main gate, was organized by the International Center for Journalists, Amnesty International and other groups.

Ms. Politkovskaya was born in 1958 in New York to a family of Soviet Ukrainian diplomats at the republic's mission to the United Nations.

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