Forget, displace, ignore, erase from memory. The Kremlin would have preferred the fifteenth anniversary of the murder of investigative journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya to pass unnoticed. The Russian authorities are annoyed when asked why those who ordered the murder have not yet been detained and brought to trial. After all, their Russia is what Politkovskaya wrote about before her death: a country with “the most corrupt judicial system in the world.”
This has not always been the case. Even in 2006, the year of Politkovskaya’s assassination, there was still hope that Russia could become a democratic state. The beginnings of a civil society appeared. For those who love Russia, it is painful to see what has become of this hope. Russia has become a dictatorship.
Parallels with Soviet power
Of course, today is still better than it was in the USSR. But the parallels with the Soviet regime are hard to deny. The Russian government persecutes, persecutes, and kills those who stand up for freedom, human rights and a dignified life. The completely arbitrary prison sentences handed down to Alexei Navalny or Oyub Titiev, the murder of Boris Nemtsov, the house arrest of Kirill Serebrennikov are just the most famous examples. At the local level, there are hundreds of others that are less known.
Miodrag Šorič, DW columnist
Those who proclaim violence as their method must make lies their principle. The words, once written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, also apply to today’s Russia. Anyone who dares to write the truth about the conditions of life in the country lives in danger. That is why most journalists bypass or smooth over those topics that may displease President Putin and his entourage: rampant corruption, falling living standards, falsification of parliamentary and presidential elections, population outflow from rural areas, destruction of infrastructure, departure of hundreds of thousands abroad is often good. educated people.
Anna Politkovskaya was different. She wrote about the atrocities of the Chechen war, about corruption among the military and intelligence officers. As a result, the state-controlled press accused her of defamation and betrayal of her homeland, calling her “a representative of the fifth column in the service of foreign states.”
Politkovskaya did not allow herself to be intimidated
However, she exactly corresponded to the definition of a patriot: a person who is ready to make sacrifices for the common good. In other words, she was the opposite of the Kremlin propagandists, enriching themselves at the expense of the people. Anna Politkovskaya was repeatedly threatened with reprisals. But she didn’t let herself be intimidated. She could comfortably live in the West. But she did not succumb to this temptation, in the end, paying a high price for it.
Was Anna Politkovskaya’s sacrifice in vain? And, more broadly, were the sacrifices made by Russian human rights defenders like Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and hundreds of others in vain? Only cynics and absolute materialists can answer this question in the affirmative. But those who have not yet completely drowned out the voice of their conscience know that it is heroes, role models, such as Anna Politkovskaya, who make life more humane, more just and, therefore, more dignified. That is why the world will continue to remember the murdered civil rights fighter – despite all the propaganda cries from the Kremlin.
Author: Miodrag Šorič, DW columnist
The commentary expresses the personal opinion of the author. It may not coincide with the opinion of the Russian editorial staff and Deutsche Welle in general.
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