PUTIN'S COLONIAL WAR
On 6 August 1996, three days before Yeltsin was to stumble through the especially shortened ceremony inaugurating his second term as Russian President, Chechen forces suddenly attacked and recaptured a string of major towns, including the battle-blasted capital, Grozny. It was the success of this assault—coupled with the unending and increasingly unpopular stream of Russian casualties—that persuaded Yeltsin to sue for peace, and within a month General Aleksandr Lebed and the Chechens’ military commander Aslan Maskhadov had signed the Khasavyurt accords, seemingly bringing to an end the brutal conflict that has been dubbed ‘Yeltsin’s Vietnam’.
Five years later, Russia is once again involved in a murderous war in Chechnya, waged as before largely on a civilian population living beneath ruins or in ‘filtration centres’ that echo unapologetically Nazi concentration camps or the Soviet Gulag. But where the first Chechen war was widely unpopular, seen as a needless waste ...
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Anna Politkovskaya Had Only One Enemy...

 

A great lady, outstanding journalist, and Human Rights activist was on an appointment with her destiny, when the cowards sent an evil agent, that was designated by his bosses and superiors to assassin the empty-handed lady that got no weapons to defend herself!

 

They wanted her to go out of existence and out of their evil ways and means, assuming that they would get away with their latest crime that was not the first, and it would not be the last.

 

This horrible crime reminds of many aspects in the "Federation of Fear", that dominated the life and fate of all the oppressed citizens of different nationalities and origins, through the predetermined courses of events that are held to be an irresistible powers or agencies, that all occupied peoples ...

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What has become of us?
By Anna Politkovskaya
Wednesday, April 5, 2006
MOSCOW
We are using Stalin's methods again, this time to fight terrorism. I write here on a subject that one can no longer write about in Russia -- islamskiy terrorizm, or Islamic terrorism cases.
There are hundreds of such cases going through the courts in our country. Most have been fabricated by the government so that the special services can demonstrate how "effective" Russia is in fighting terrorism and so President Vladimir Putin has something with which to impress the West.
Close examination of these cases shows that many interrogation records have been tampered with and that the documents containing "honest confessions" were obtained through the torture of innocent suspects who are being punished for the crimes of Chechen separatist Shamil Basayev.
Here's one example: Recently two young college students from the Chechen capital of Grozny -- Musa Lomayev and ...
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Stalinism Forever
By Anna Politkovskaya
Saturday, April 1, 2006; A17
MOSCOW -- We are using Stalin's methods again, this time to fight terrorism. I am writing for this American newspaper on a subject that one can no longer write about in Russia -- islamskiy terrorizm, or Islamic terrorism cases. There are hundreds of such cases going through the courts in our country. Most of them have been fabricated by the government so that the special services can demonstrate how "effective" Russia is in fighting terrorism and so that President Vladimir Putin has something with which to impress the West.
Close examination of these cases shows that many interrogation records have been tampered with and that the documents containing so-called honest confessions were obtained through the torture of innocent suspects who are being punished for the crimes of Chechen separatist Shamil Basayev.
Here is one example of how it's done. Recently two young college students from ...
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Poison in the air

When a sinister illness hit schoolchildren and their teachers in war-torn Chechnya in December, doctors were convinced it was a case of poisoning. Then the government came up with its own diagnosis - mass hysteria. Is there an official cover-up going on? Anna Politkovskaya reports

Wednesday March 1, 2006
The Guardian
Awar has been raging in the north Caucasian Republic of Chechnya in the Russian Federation since November 1994. Over the years, officials in Moscow have given the war various names. Sometimes it is called "putting the region in order"; since the beginning of the international "anti-terrorist" era, it has become a "counter-terrorist operation". But it is never called a war, despite the fact that an estimated 70,000-200,000 Russian military personnel are conducting operations as if on enemy territory. The civilian population has taken the brunt of the military impact. For the past 12 years, those living ...
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Pro-Democracy international award announced
Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist whose dispatches from the war in Chechnya have led to death threats and poisoning, and Min Ko Naing, a Burmese pro-democracy advocate who endured fifteen years of imprisonment and torture, will receive the Civil Courage Prize on Oct. 11.
The Civil Courage Prize of $50,000 honors steadfast resistance to injustice at great personal risk. It has been awarded annually since 2000 by the Northcote Parkinson Fund. In 2004, the Civil Courage Prize was awarded to Dr. Lovemore Madhuku for his work in pursuing constitutional reforms in the Zimbabwe.
Anna Politkovskaya, special correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and author of three books, reports on the plight of Chechnya's civilian population, which has been under military assault since 1994. She has put herself in danger by openly challenging the authorities. In February of 2000, the FSB (the former KGB) arrested Politkovskaya in ...
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A Russian Reporter In Chechnya
Anna Politkovskaya is a special correspondent for the bi-weekly Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Her reports from the southern Russian republic, Chechnya, have angered authorities.

Once detained by Russian troops herself in Chechnya, she has experienced the conflict both as a reporter and a victim. She talks to Outlook about her new book A Dirty War.

Anna Politkovskaya has made social issues her business. As a journalist she has reported on many subjects – from the fate of orphans to Russia’s defective judicial system.

Tired of the media image driven by the Russian government, Politkovskaya aims to keep the fate of Chechnya in the public eye. She presents the brutality from both sides when describing the abuses of the Chechen War whether due to the corruption of Post Communist Russia or the Russian authorities.

Her dispatches, from July 1999 to January 2001, tell a very different story to that ...
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