Politkovskaya expected death: new film

by Carole Landry – Thu Nov 19

PARIS (AFP) – Two years before she was killed in the stairwell of her
Moscow apartment, Anna Politkovskaya mused about life as the Kremlin's
number one enemy and pronounced it a "miracle" that she was still alive.

The journalist, lauded for her fearless reporting of Russian atrocities
in Chechnya, made the comment during the interviews that make up the
moving documentary film "Lettre a Anna" (Letter to Anna) released this
week in France.

The letter of the title is written by Swiss filmmaker Eric Bergkraut who
had recorded four in-depth interviews with Politkovskaya for another
film on Russia when she was murdered on October 7, 2006.

He quickly decided to shift focus and the result is a 75-minute
documentary featuring Politkovskaya as well as conversations with her
grieving family and colleagues at the Novaya Gazeta newspaper where she
worked.

"Why am I still alive? I think it's probably a miracle," she says in a
haunting interview filmed in Geneva in 2004.

"I would like to think that someone wants me to spend more time on this
Earth. But I do believe it's a miracle."

Politkovskaya was 48 years old when she died, shot four times as she
returned home from a shopping trip, carrying groceries but also a gift
for her daughter Vera, who was four months pregnant with her first
grand-child.

Video footage from a security camera showed her killer -- a dark-haired
man wearing a cap who knew the code to enter her building on Lesnaya
Street, now a pilgrimage site for human rights activists in Russia.

At the time of her murder, Politkovskaya was writing a report on the
torture tactics used by Chechnya's Moscow-annointed leader Ramzan
Kadyrov, who has managed to contain an insurgency there through brute
repression.

Four men accused of involvement in her murder were acquitted in a trial
in February but the Supreme Court quashed the acquittal and ordered a
re-trial. The family believes those responsible for her murder have yet
to face justice.

The film features closeup shots of her hazel-coloured eyes peering out
from her wire-rimmed glasses and many touching scenes of her laughing
and chatting with close friend Zainap Gashayeva, a Chechen human rights
activist.

In one scene, Politkovskaya spoke of a videocassette, given to her by a
Russian soldier, of Chechen combatants beaten and humiliated after
agreeing to a an offer of amnesty from Moscow.

"There are 74 men seen on this film. Only three are alive," she
explained. "So that's what I'm working on."

In the documentary, Politkovskaya expounds on her sharply critical view
of Vladimir Putin, who was then Russia's president, and of the poor
state of civil liberties in Russia after two wars in Chechnya.

"How many lives have to be lost to call it a genocide?" she asked. "For
me, according to my values, this is a genocide."

Politkovskaya was aware that her life was in danger but she continued
her work, even at a time when few people in Russia seemed interested in
what she had to say.

"Of course I'm afraid," she commented in one of the interviews. "But I
feel that I share the fate of civilians. I don't see any difference
between them and me."

She was briefly captured by Russian soldiers in Chechnya in 2001 and
survived a violent bout of poisoning 2004 after drinking a cup of tea on
a plane taking her from Moscow to Beslan to cover the Chechen school
hostage-taking.

The film ends with Politkovskaya's daughter declaring that "Russia is
still a dangerous place for independent thinkers." At least 10
journalists have been killed since Politkovskaya's murder.

Politkovskaya's fate has had a strong resonance in France where leading
human rights and press freedom groups supported the production of the
documentary.

French actress Catherine Deneuve lends her voice to dub Politkovskaya's
Russian language interviews and debates have been organised at movie
theatres following the screening.