Russian rights campaigner found dead

Russian rights campaigner found dead
By Catherine Belton in Moscow
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: July 15 2009 21:43 | Last updated: July 15 2009 21:43
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/143ea6c8-717e-11de-a821-00144feabdc0.html


A prominent human rights activist has been found dead in Ingushetia with two gun shot wounds to her head after being kidnapped on Wednesday morning in the neighbouring republic of Chechnya, the third killing of an activist this year.

Natalia Estemirova had tirelessly documented abuses by law enforcement agencies for Memorial, the Russian human rights organization, in Grozny, the Chechen capital, since 1999. She was a close friend of Anna Politkovskaya, the crusading journalist who was shot dead outside her apartment in 2006.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, yesterday condemned the murder, saying he was “outraged” and ordered an investigation into her death. But the killing marks the third time a human rights activist has been killed under his watch this year, and raises fresh doubts about his pledge to uphold the rule of law.

Two other activists, human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, and journalist Anastasia Baburova, were gunned down in broad daylight on a Moscow street earlier this year. The perpetrators are yet to be found.

Ms Estemirova had recently completed a report for Memorial documenting the burning of homes belonging to the families of suspected insurgents and extrajudicial executions in Chechnya in which Chechen law enforcement officials were alleged to have been involved.

The most recent example was the death of Abusubyan Albekov, a Chechen villager who was reported to have been gunned down in the Kurchaloi district after being detained by law enforcers on July 7. The abuses were also documented in a recent report by New York-based Human Rights Watch, which Estermirova worked closely with.

Russia is no longer fighting a war in Chechnya. But as the Kremlin-backed Chechen regime battles a simmering insurgency, opponents of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen president, have been regularly murdered, not just in Chechnya, but in central Moscow, Vienna and, March, in Dubai where Sulim Yamadayev, the head of a rival clan, was shot dead.

Mr Kadyrov denies any role in the killings. Chechen authorities declined to comment on Ms Estemirova’s death. As recently as this week, however, Chechnya’s Human Rights ombudsman said Memorial and Human Rights Watch was not welcome in Chechnya, said Rachel Denber, deputy director of HRW for Europe and Central Asia.

Ms Denber said Ms Estemirova “was a monumental person in the human rights movement and we’re totally shattered.” “She was instrumental to telling the truth about what is happening in Chechnya. She was interested not in scandal but in real justice for people in Chechnya,” Ms Denber said, adding she had actively encouraged victims of human rights abuses in Chechnya to seek justice in the European Court of Human Rights.

Ms Estemirova had acted as Anna Politkovskaya’s interpreter during reporting trips to Chechnya and was the first recipient in 2007 of the Anna Politkovskaya Award given by the charity Reach All Women in War. She was seized as she left her house on Wednesday morning, pushed into a white vehicle and driven away, Human Rights Watch said.