Translated material
"She was killed for the truth"
Muscovites gathered around Pushkin...
Yesterday's picket on Pushkin Square, where human rights activists intended to express their attitude towards anti-Georgian sentiments in society, turned into a rally in memory of Anna Politkovskaya. Posters with the slogans: “Persecution of people on the basis of their nationality disgraces Russia,” as well as pre-prepared solidarity badges “I am Georgian” and “I love khachapuri,” were adjacent to a portrait of Anna Politkovskaya installed at the entrance to the square, where people brought flowers, icons and lit candles. Nearby appeared a portrait of Galina Starovoitova, who was killed under similar circumstances several years ago in the entrance of her own house.The murder of a famous journalist ensured increased attention to the picket both from Muscovites and from law enforcement agencies. It is unlikely that a rally in support of Russian Georgians, who are now experiencing pressure from law enforcement, would have attracted more than a hundred or two citizens. To honor the memory of Anna Politkovskaya, as vigilant police officers calculated, about 2.5 thousand people gathered in the park near the Pushkin monument and its environs. Together with well-known human rights activists - Lyudmila Alekseeva, Valery Borshchev, Lev Ponomarev, representatives of opposition political movements also took part in the picket - the leader of the Union of Right Forces Nikita Belykh, the deputy chairman of Yabloko Sergei Mitrokhin and the head of the Republican Party of Russia Vladimir Ryzhkov.
The organizers of the action, having initially received permission from the city authorities to hold a picket, did not provoke the police with rally speeches. However, the entire square, in fact, was a platform where everyone was saying that the cause of the death of the Novaya Gazeta journalist, known for her uncompromising position on Chechnya, was her professional activity.
Therefore, the speeches of the organizers of the action to journalists went beyond the “Georgian topic”. The head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alekseeva, who spoke “in defense of Georgians who are unfairly persecuted in Russia on the basis of their nationality,” recalled that “people should not be bargaining chips in some kind of political game,” meaning both people from the Caucasus and Ms. Politkovskaya. “Anna Politkovskaya was not just an honest journalist, she was a wonderful citizen of our country. We kill those people who tell the truth, because there was nothing to object to what Anya wrote about,” said Ms. Alekseeva. Valery Borshchev called Politkovskaya's murder political. “Anna Politkovskaya interfered with her independence, her honesty, and the fact that she fearlessly fought against tyranny,” he said. The leader of the movement “For Human Rights” Lev Ponomarev said that “those who incite anti-Georgian hysteria are the same people who shot Politkovskaya.”
Leaving Pushkin Square, many of the protesters went to pay their respects to the journalist on Lesnaya Street, where the murder took place on Saturday afternoon.
... St. Petersburg - around the Solovetsky stone
The pouring rain did not stop St. Petersburg residents who gathered yesterday at three o'clock in the afternoon at the Solovetsky Stone - a monument to the victims of Stalin's repressions - to honor the memory of Anna Politkovskaya.
There were hardly more than 300 of them. But from the expressions on their faces, their behavior, and the general atmosphere, it was felt that there were no random people here. That people came to Trinity Square clearly aware of what exactly had happened and was happening. They made almost no speeches - they stood silently under black umbrellas or carried and carried flowers to the foot of the stone. Large drops of rain and wind constantly extinguished the candles, but there were more relit candles than extinguished ones. And the monument to the victims of Stalin's repressions was constantly surrounded by swaying waves of fire.
On the base of the stone brought from Solovki, right above the inscription “Prisoners of the Gulag,” there were several portraits of the deceased journalist, as if emphasizing that terror has not become a fact of the Russian past - violence against people and the shooting of the best are facts of our time. Few speakers spoke about this. The same idea is emphasized in the appeal adopted yesterday by St. Petersburg opposition organizations - Yabloko, the Union of Right Forces, the Memorial association, the United Civil Front and others.
In this document, which was read by the head of the St. Petersburg branch of Memorial, Yuliy Rybakov, democratic leaders warn about the threat of the onset of fascism and say that political terror has now become an ordinary phenomenon in Russia. “We gathered on a terrible day, what happened, another victim of political terror, another terrible crime,” said Yuliy Rybakov, and it was clearly felt that words were difficult for him. “Every time I read her articles, I became afraid for her,” said Novaya Gazeta columnist Boris Vishnevsky. “In our difficult times, this person was not afraid to tell the truth, that’s why she was killed,” said Olga Kurnosova, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front.
Some of those who came read poetry in a quiet voice. Some lamented that at best, hundreds, and usually only dozens of St. Petersburg residents have come to opposition street rallies lately. The 1990s, when tens of thousands of people filled the squares at the call of democratic leaders, are irrevocably over. Many remembered that although three perpetrators and organizers of another high-profile murder were recently convicted - the shooting of State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova in St. Petersburg in 1998 - most of the accused were still acquitted. And most importantly, the masterminds of this crime have not been identified.
The police, which had recently brutally dispersed opposition rallies in St. Petersburg, did not interfere this time and watched what was happening from a respectful distance.