I've just heard the news that Anna Politkovskaya has been murdered in Moscow. "She was shot dead in the entrance hall of the house where she lived," said Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, the paper for which she regularly wrote.
Politkovskaya was a prominent critic of the Kremlin's policies in general and President Vladimir Putin in particular. She was opposed to the prosecution of the war in Chechnya and to its negative effects on the progress of post-communist society in Russia. She survived two previous attempts on her life. In one case, she was poisoned while on her way to cover the Beslan siege. She was also once kidnapped. Despite persistent threats and intimidation she refused to relent from her single-minded journalistic mission to try to tell the truth about her country to other Russians and to the rest of the world.
But the fact of her death has shocked the world of journalism. Timothy Balding, ceo of the World Association of Newspapers, said: "This is tragic and deeply shocking news. We condemn this as an outrageous attack not only on a journalist but on freedom of the press and democracy in Russia. We call on the Russian authorities to pursue mercilessly the killer or killers and those behind this cowardly act". He spoke of the "sceptics" who had cast doubt on claims that she had been the victim of attempted poisoning, and observed: "This assassination is terrible confirmation, if any were needed, that she was not inventing her claims that she was constantly under physical threat".
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe also expressed profound shock at the death. Its chairman-in-office, the Belgian foreign minister, Karel De Gucht, said: "I condemn the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia's most outstanding investigative journalists and political commentators. This is a tragic and profoundly shocking loss". The OSCE representative on freedom of the media, Miklos Haraszti, added: "It is extremely important to break the circle of inconclusive investigations in regard to the recent murders of journalists in Russia. The violent death of any member of the media stifles the free spirit of journalism." In 2003, Politkovskaya received an OSCE award for her courageous professional work in support of "human rights and freedom of the media".
And the Paris-based press watchdog, Reporters Without Borders also registered its shock, pointing out that at its Vienna conference on press freedom last December Politkovskaya told delegates: "People sometimes pay with their lives for saying out loud what they think. People can even get killed just for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger."
I met Politkovskaya first at a journalism conference in Sweden three years ago where, despite her lack of English, she managed to convey her passionate commitment to democracy and to the kind of journalism that aids democracy. As I noted in a review of her 2004 book, Putin's Russia, to describe her as courageous was surely an enormous understatement. Her bravery was unparalleled, on a different scale even from that of war correspondents who run towards the sound of gunfire. At least, they can pull back to safety, but Politkovskaya refused to leave the front line.
Nor can it be said that she lived in innocence. Nobody knew better than her the awesome and ruthless power of the repressive regime whose excesses she regularly exposed. Her investigative reports in Novaya Gazeta were renowned for their candour. Her previous book, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya, catalogued the suffering of the Chechen people due to Russia's indiscriminate human rights violations in responding to terrorism, a terrorism which she also condemned.
Russia is diminished by her murder. An investigation is supposedly under way, led by Moscow's chief prosecutor, Yury Syomin. Let us hope that her assassin does not go unpunished and that the facts behind her murder are revealed. Here was a true journalistic heroine, rightly regarded as Russia's "lost moral conscience". It is sobering to re-read a key line from Putin's Russia. She wrote: "The shroud of darkness from which we spent several Soviet decades trying to free ourselves is enveloping us again".
