The brutal assassination of a human rights activist

Another one in a string of high-profile murders in Russia: the dead body of the Memorial center human rights activist Natalia Estemirova was found in Ingushetia last Wednesday. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, it is the 300th incident since 1990, when a journalist has died or been missing.

“Human rights champion Natalia Estemirova killed: one more righteous person is dead,” “Russia without violence,” “Caucasus war is a crime against humanity.” These placards were in the hands of about 150 people who honored the human rights activist’s memory in Moscow’s Novopushkinsky Park: they were members of such political movements as the United Civic Front (OGF), Solidarity, Yabloko, and Union for Solidarity with Political Prisoners. They laid flowers to Estemirova’s portrait and lighted candles. And on Thursday night Estemirova was buried at the cemetery of the village Koshkeldy, Chechnya, next to her father’s grave. A member of the civic supervisory commission in Chechnya, the human rights activist conducted investigations into murders, tortures, kidnappings, and criminal frame-ups. Estemirova was also one of the very few who criticized the instruction of Checnya President Ramzan Kadyrov for girls to wear headscarves in schools and universities.

She said last May: “I think it is, first of all, implementation of the intention to establish a dictatorship and curtail the rights of a certain part of the population. And men are silent, they do not say that it is wrong and runs counter to traditions. For only the father or brother could tell his wife or daughter to put on a headscarf.”

In the opinion of Memorial activists, her activity was the reason why she was abducted and killed. Oleg Popov, chairman of the center’s board, said he knows the name of Estemirov’s killer and put the blame on Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. This was reported on Memorial’s website. “We know that Natalia’s latest accounts of new kidnappings, out-of-court executions, and a public execution by firing squad in a Chechen village caused resentment among Chechnya’s top officials. I know for sure who is guilty of killing Natasha Estemirova. His name is Ramzan Kadyrov. Ramzan had been threatening and insulting Natalia, considering her his personal enemy.”

When Memorial was picketing in memory of the slain human rights activist, Kadyrov called Orlov on his cell phone and suggested having a “man-to-man” talk. Orlov says the President of Chechnya did not threaten him – he only admonished him for groundless accusations. The Memorial head responded that Kadyrov “was guilty at least because he is President of Chechnya and is thus responsible for what is going on there, and it is he who established a regime of total impunity and lack of control, when people are being abducted.” During the phone conversation Kadyrov repeated his own version of the murder’s motive. In his words, the assassination of Estemirova was aimed at denigrating the Chechen and Ingush peoples in the eyes of the world community. Incidentally, this situation stirs up the recollection of a case when former Russian security officer Aleksandr Litvinenko was poisoned with Polonium-210. At the time, the Russian president’s aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky called the murder a provocation and a plot against Vladimir Putin.

The current Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who was visiting the Munich-based Petersburg Dialogue, also called this murder a provocation. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom Medvedev was holding negotiations, admitted that she was shocked with this news. In Merkel’s words, Estemirova was a courageous woman who had been deservedly awarded the European Parliament Medal. The head of the German government also told Medvedev that such things must not be allowed to happen. The Russian president himself flatly rejected the version of Kadyrov’s complicity as “primitive.”

The international public has strongly reacted to the news of the human rights champion’s death. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he was terrified to learn about the murder of the Russian human rights activist. “We want every effort made to find the perpetrators of this crime so that they may be brought to trial.” Sweden, which holds the current EU presidency, has also condemned the brutal murder of Estemirova and urged Moscow to track down the guilty. The Council of Europe reacted as follows: “It is an outrageous and perfidious crime. This requires resolute and effective measure.” The Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner urged the Russian authorities to conduct an unbiased investigation and find the guilty. The European Parliament’s president has also joined this call. The White House said it is an “outrageous” crime and requested the Russian government to find the guilty and make sure that “lawlessness and impunity are inadmissible in this case.”

The leading international human rights organizations have also condemned the murder of Estemirova. “We are shocked with this crime and are expressing sympathy to her family and friends. President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia is to keep his promise and conduct a thorough investigation of the murder,” a deputy chair of the International Committee to Protect Journalists said. Of the same opinion is Human Rights Watch which has emphasized that Estemirova’s murder is a challenge to the entire human rights movement. They added that impunity of criminals is a widespread phenomenon in Chechnya, and local authorities are unable to carry out an effective investigation on their own. This should be done by the federal center. The international organization Reporters Without Borders is “appalled and saddened” by the human right activist’s murder, according to the statement posted on its website.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Russia ranked 9th in 2008 in the Impunity Index: 16 journalists have been killed since 1999 in revenge for highlighting corruption in the ruling circles, unrest in Northern Caucasus regions, and organized crime. All the murders, except for one, still remain unsolved. Murders of journalists and human rights activists is the problem of not only Northern Caucasus but also other regions of Russia. The West demands a full-sane investigation into the deaths of Paul Chlebnikov, editor of Forbes magazine’s Russian version, and Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist of the oppositional Novaya gazeta, which occurred in 2004 and 2006, respectively. In early 2009 Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer, and Anastasiya Baburova, a Novaya gazeta journalist, were killed a few hundred meters away from the Kremlin.

Estemirova was 50. She is survived by a schooling-age daughter. Since the beginning of the second Chechen war, Estemirova has been investigating instances of violent death among the Chechen civilian population. The first winner of the Politkovskaya Prize, she has recorded hundreds of human rights violations in Chechnya. In 2000 she joined the Memorial human rights society. In January 2005 a group of European Parliament members handed Estemirova and Memorial chairman Sergei Kovalyov a Robert Schuman Medal.