Russia Profile
July 16, 2009
A Tragedy For Chechnya
Yet Another Murder of a Close Friend Leaves Russia’s Human Rights Movement in Shock, But Hurts Chechens Most of All
By Roland Oliphant
Natalia Estemirova was a human rights defender, a Chechen, a mother and, according to her friends, a romantic. She was also absolutely crucial to the activities of human rights organizations and journalists in Chechnya, positioning herself as a representative for ordinary Chechens without a voice. Her murder on Wednesday has sent shock through the Human Rights community, and prompted immediate comparison with the death’s of Anna Polikovskaya and Stanislav Markelov. But it also raises serious questions about how far the Kremlin can control Ramzan Kadyrov.
Colleagues had been trying to call Natalia Estemirova all yesterday morning. She had missed an appointment with a journalist at 10 o’clock, and was not answering her phone. It was only when she did not show up to pick up her daughter from her office at 2:30 that afternoon that they realized something was wrong. “That’s when people became frantic,” said Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch, who was at a press conference in Grozny for the release of a new book by the Russian-Chechen Society on the prospects of justice for war crimes committed in the Chechnya. “That’s when someone from Memorial called me and told me she had been missing as of early that morning,” she said.
What had happened on Wednesday morning or at least, the eye-witness account that her colleagues managed to piece together as they searched for her has already been published and republished around the world. She left her house at about 8:30 that morning to catch the bus to the Memorial office in central Grozny; a white Zhiguli pulled up, and several men jumped out and bundled her into the back seat; she managed to shout out that she was being kidnapped before being driven off; and she may have been pointed out to the kidnappers by a woman walking behind her.
Later that afternoon came the news that a body had been found in Ingushetia, followed by confirmation from the Interior Ministry that the body was, indeed, Estemirova’s. She had been shot several times in the head and chest and dumped on the side of the Kavkaz federal highway north of Nazran.
Filling in the intervening hours will be the job of the investigators Russian President Dmitry Medvedev promptly ordered to the region. On Medvedev’s instruction Alexander Bastrykinu, the chief of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office, arrived in the region on Thursday, will face some tough questions, and they are likely to lead to uncomfortable territory. How, for example, did the killers cross the border into Ingushetia, through a region where a massive “joint security operation” is meant to be going on to catch the insurgents who attacked Ingush President Yunnus Bek Yevkurov last month? Why were they not caught by President Ramzan Kadyrov’s supposedly all-powerful security forces? What was their motive, and whose orders were they acting on?
Those inclined to call a spade a spade, or a murderer a murderer, have already answered the last question vocally, and in public. Oleg Orlov, Estemirova’s chief at Memorial and himself a victim of kidnapping in Chechnya a few years ago, told Radio Svoboda on Wednesday that “Ramzan Kadyrov personally threatened her in a private conversation.” Although he did not “know whether Ramzan Kadyrov gave the order personally, or it was done through the second or third persons,” he was clear on who he held responsible.
For his part, Kadyrov has issued his customary sympathetic and righteously angry statement for such occasions, calling Estemirova a “defenseless woman,” taking the investigation under his “personal control,” and promising journalists on Wednesday evening that “the search for the criminals will be pursued not only by the official investigation, but also informally in accordance with the traditions of the Chechens.” Kadyrov has been displaying a particular fondness for “traditional law” lately he promised “mountain justice” to the attackers of Yunnus-bek Yevkurov last month.
But Estemirova’s colleagues say that if anyone had a motive, it was Kadyrov. Her reporting the details of kidnappings and other human rights violations made her a serious thorn in the side of the security services. She is said to have been investigating a spate of punitive house burnings committed by pro-Kadyrov militia. “In Chechnya there are secret groups of the Russian forces operating for whom secrecy is the greatest priority. And she was taking away that secrecy,” said Fatima Tlisova, a human rights journalist who worked closely with Estemirova. “If you report that there was a kidnapping, and there was a car with such and such a color with this number plate, and a man who looked like this and another who looked like that you’re breaking sacred rules for these people. It doesn’t matter if Kadyrov gave the order personally, or if it was some high-ranking officer. It is the same system. And that system was her enemy.”
As President Dmitry Medvedev, currently in Germany, put it in a statement released through his press secretary, “unfortunately, it is apparent that this premeditated murder may be related to her professional activities.” But admitting the obvious is not the same as solving the crime. It is also obvious that even if Kadyrov is guilty, the president cannot very well order the arrest of the man who keeps Chechnya in order for the Kremlin.
Yet it is Chechnya that has lost most of all from the death of Estemirova. Half Russian, half Chechen, she was a native of the republic and deeply attached to Chechnya and its people. She reluctantly left during the first Chechen war out of concern for her daughter, and in the course of the second war had to leave again after receiving death threats. But she stayed away less than a year. “She said she belonged in Chechnya. People were warning her - I warned her that if she came back, some day she would die,” recalled Tlisova. “Why? Why, did she do what she did? Because she was a Chechen. Because these were her people.”
But she did return, and over the past several years made herself the single most important link for the human rights movement in Chechnya. She positioned herself as a representative of ordinary Chechens, and became the go-to person for human rights groups and journalists alike. “She was the only way, for many, many years, for the international media or human rights organizations to connect to ordinary people in Chechnya,” said Tlisova. “Last night I was thinking how much she took with her; how much information; how many people now are left like orphans; I don’t think someone can replace her; it is an invaluable loss for Chechnya.”
Colleagues at other human rights organizations agreed. “Natasha did not just work for Memorial. If any other human rights organization was doing anything there; if Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International went to the region she was the first stop for information,” said Lokshina. “Without her, frankly, I don’t know how we are going to continue.”
She had worked closely with both Stanislav Markelov and Anna Politkovskaya, the murdered Lawyer and journalist with whom her own death will inevitably be compared and associated. She acted as Politkovskaya’s guide on her journeys into Chechnya during the second war. And Markelov was known for taking on cases that Politkovskaya unearthed. “In fact it was partly to honor their memory that she continued to work,” said Lokshina.
That Politkovskaya, Markelov and Estemirova knew each other is no coincidence. The Russian human rights community is incredibly close-knit, and each of these murders have left its members reeling - when Lokshina spoke for this article she was preparing for the funeral. And the death of Estemirova seems to hammer home a particularly brutal message. “It is like the last drop in a glass before it overflows,” said Tlisova, explaining her shock. “We just have to face it now; that this is how it works.”
