Three Goodbyes for Chechnya's Witnesses

Elena Milashina, a spirited young reporter for Russia's Novaya Gazeta, described the last time she saw her friend, Natalia Estemirova, a history teacher turned human rights investigator in Grozny, the capitol of wartime Chechnya, this past summer. They were up until four a.m., Estemirova was dressed in a light white dress. It was a balmy summer evening. Milashina was keeping her from getting work done, telling stories.

After Estemirova's body was found with five bullet holes in it a few weeks later, dumped on the side of the road in Gaziyurt, Ingushetia, Milashina and their friends and co-workers came back to Grozny for Estemirova's burial. Then, as is Russian custom, they came back again on the ninth day to remember her. Then they came on the fortieth day for one last round of remembrance. Only this time, Milashina recalled, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in town. But rather than visit Estemirova's grave, the resting place of one of Russia's purest, if not most kind and caring human rights monitors, Putin was with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, at the grave of Kadyrov's father, Akhmed, a notorious warlord turned Russian ally in the Chechen Wars.

Milashina shared the story this evening, with others, at a gathering at the City University of New York, set up by the Committee to Protect Journalists, PEN, the Chechnya Advocacy Network, and others. I sat in the audience, falling to pieces.

What really struck me about Milashina at this talk - which also included Tanya Lokshina from Human Rights Watch-Moscow; Keith Gessen who wrote for the New Yorker on the murder of their colleague Anna Politkovskaya; Salman Rushdie; Ann Cooper; and Michael Arena - was that there was an inescapable, overpowering feeling that she, as well as Lokshina, were, well, next. How could we appropriately thank them, encourage them, and protect them?

Back in 2006, after living and working around the former Soviet Union, I landed a gig managing humanitarian aid in Chechnya and Ingushetia. The region lies at the foot of snow capped mountains; it's gorgeous. I met some great friends, really sweet people. But even my brief time was marked by a few roadside bomb scares, gunshots in the yard late at night, a couple of long, unnecessary questionings by state security men, rides with armed interior ministry guards, including some of Kadyrov's special forces, and more than anything the incredible feeling of pushing against a stone wall because that was the only way forward. I can't imagine doing that for years like these women have done.

There was a UN coordination meeting where I believe I met Estemirova, definitely a few of her staff. Memorial, the human rights agency she led, was seeking witnesses willing to come forward and tell the world what they had seen, help parents find missing children, and help willing prosecutors to indict killers. The Memorial team spoke suggestively, indirectly, about what to do if people we met, staff or beneficiaries, might under certain protections and/or anonymity wish to give witness testimony to help their cause.

Most of the aid workers, some with armed guards, looked at each other and thought, no way we're taking a bullet for what looked like a lost cause. And yet Milashina and Lokshina, like Estemirova, Politkovskaya, and a dozen or so who came with them, were these powerful people pushing the stone wall and - while the rest of us thought it was impossible - moving it forward.

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If you'd like to contribute in some way to protecting human rights and journalism in southern Russia, start with the cause put up on Change by fellow blogger, Alan Haggard, and try Amnesty International. Best places for donations would be Memorial, the Chechnya Advocacy Network, Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, or for humanitarian aid the International Rescue Committee.

To learn more, I'd recommend watching the intro to Estemirova's work made by Human Rights Watch, then try links to more stories about her at the Chechnya Advocacy Network, run by my friend Almut Rochowanski. The wars in southern Russia affect not only Chechnya, but also several neighboring republics. Try the International Crisis Grourp for the politics, the Radio Liberty for reporting summaries, and if you read Russian try Novaya Gazeta and Lenta.ru/vojna.

[Photo: Shaamiyurt, Chechnya. Daniel J Gerstle.]