Is Journalism Worth Dying For? by Anna Politkovskaya

Author:Anna Politkovskaya [Politkovskaya, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-935554-70-7
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2011-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

57 HOURS

November 4, 2002

The last few days have passed in a feverish delirium. Moscow is burying the hostages. Today, just like yesterday, just like tomorrow. It is unbearable. The faces of the dead are calm, not contorted, as if they had simply fallen asleep. And actually that is just what they did, because Russia failed to administer the gas [used prior to the assault] in the correct concentration.

I make it a rule not to write reports from funerals but this will be an exception. Lena, my old, dear friend, is burying her son Andryusha and her husband Sergey. On October 23 the three of them went to the theatre together. They were seated together, waited together for help to come, but only Lena survived.

The coffins of Andryusha and Sergey are side by side in the church, with a narrow passage between them. There are so many people you couldn’t push your way through. Nobody makes any speeches, there is no politics, only Lena walking up and down this passage, murmuring from time to time. When she stops walking she rests a hand on each coffin and tries not to collapse. She lowers her head between the coffins and so resembles a bird with outspread wings, or somebody wounded struggling to get to their feet.

I too am terribly, irredeemably guilty for what has befallen Lena, and only I know why. It is too late to do anything about it.

After the funerals I fly to Paris for a few hours and very soon regret having done so. The television station France 2 has invited me to take part in the country’s most popular Saturday evening program. I agreed only because people were telling me how little the West understood what is happening in “the East.”

On the show, compered by French television celebrity Thiérry Ardisson, a well-known French singer was to perform immediately before me. I didn’t write his name down and can’t remember it now. There was also the Minister of Health from the Chechen Government when Maskhadov was in power, Umar somebody. Torrents of words poured forth about the Chechens, and how long and tirelessly they have been fighting for their freedom. The singer thought it was terrific, as did the presenter. It only left a very short time for me to say … Well, to say what, now that I had this prime-time opportunity?

I spoke badly, briefly, and not at all to the point. It was a disgrace, of course, because if you are given an opportunity to state your viewpoint, you should be ready to do so. No matter how hard I tried, though, I felt completely alien in this environment. We were on different wavelengths. Nobody in the audience wanted to hear about what, having just come from all these funerals, mattered most to me – the victims, the dreadful consequences. The Ichkerian Minister of Health (who really had nothing to do with anything, and who seemed rather at sea) found himself the focus of a whirl of emotional exclamations from admiring, ecstatic Frenchwomen of the same, far from young, age as me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.