Award-winning human rights campaigner murdered in Chechnya
Natalia Estemirova found shot dead after being abducted outside her home
- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 July 2009 20.20 BST
- Article history
Natalia Estemirova in the Chechen capital, Grozny, in 2004. The Russian human rights activist was found dead today. Photograph: Memorial/AFP/Getty
Russia's human rights record tonight came under severe criticism after one of the country's most famous human rights campaigners was abducted from her home in Chechnya and brutally murdered.
Natalia Estemirova was seized by four unknown men this morning as she left for work. Neighbours at her house in Grozny, Chechnya's capital, heard her shout: "I'm being kidnapped."
Her body was found near Gazi-Yurt village, in neighbouring Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head and chest, police said, adding that her corpse had been dumped on the main road.
Human rights activists expressed outrage at her murder, reminiscent of the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist, writer, and bitter Kremlin critic shot dead outside her Moscow apartment in 2006.
Estemirova, 50, was a close friend of Politkovskaya's. The two had collaborated on numerous investigations into human rights abuses in Chechnya. Both were scathing opponents of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's pro-Kremlin president.
"Natasha was at the forefront of some of the most intense human rights investigations in Chechnya," said Allison Gill, director of Human Rights Watch in Russia. "She was targeted because of her work. I have no doubt her killing was to silence her. One of the most amazing things about Natasha is that she never stopped doing what she was doing. She never checked herself. She was highly public in her calls for accountability.
"I think the human rights situation is in crisis in Russia," she added. "We have a deathly silence from the authorities whenever activists, lawyers or journalists are murdered. Not a single person is brought to justice."
Estemirova was the Chechnya-based head of Memorial, Russia's oldest human rights group.
Operating out of a small office in Grozny, she doggedly pursued stories of human rights abuses in the face of official intimidation and hostility.
She recently collaborated on two damning reports into punitive house burnings and extra-judicial killings in Chechnya, allegedly carried out by Kadyrov's forces. The reports documented how on 2 July his troops allegedly shot 20-year-old Madina Yunusova and her husband near Grozny.
Chechen officials claimed her husband had been involved in a plot to kill Kadyrov. Yunosova died three days later in hospital under mysterious circumstances.
"Natasha was always involved in the most sensitive cases. She knew what she was doing. She knew the risks," Shamil Tangiyev, a former Memorial colleague said. "She was extremely brave. It was in her nature to be an activist."
Estemirova made no attempt to hide her work. Her office near the newly renamed Putin avenue was well known.
The timing of her murder follows Barack Obama's first visit to Moscow last week as US president. Obama met with Russian human rights activists and set out the US's commitment to "universal values".
The Kremlin responded with hardline pronouncements, with the president, Dmitry Medvedev, visiting the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia on Monday. The trip appeared to be a direct rebuff to Obama who had said that both Georgia and Ukraine should be free to choose their own leaders.
Estemirova, who leaves a 15-year-old daughter, was probably the best-known human rights activist in Russia's provinces.
Earlier this year she attended the trial in Moscow of four people – two of them Chechens – accused of involvement in Politkovskaya's murder.
Speaking to the Guardian in February, Estemirova called the Politkovskaya trial a "farce".
Kadyrov, a close ally of Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has denied accusations he was involved in Politkovskaya's killing, remarking: "I don't kill women."
Recently the Kremlin has given Kadyrov unprecedented powers for counter-terrorist operations in Ingushetia, amid a worsening Islamist insurgency across the entire North Caucasus.
Estemirova was also a close colleague of Stanislav Markelov, the human rights lawyer murdered in Moscow in January. A masked assassin shot Markelov in the back of the head, not far from the Kremlin, along with Anastasia Baburova, a journalist with the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
Human rights activist kidnapped and killed in the Caucasus
16 July, 2009, 08:10
The body of a human rights activist who was kidnapped on Wednesday in Chechnya has been found in the neighboring north Caucasian republic of Ingushetia.
The Investigation Committee of the Russian prosecution office said the body of a person carrying the identification of Natalya Estemirova was found on Wednesday afternoon near the city of Nazran.
It appears the woman died from gun shots in the head and chest. Investigators are now working at the scene.
Russian Investigation Committee considers the professional activities of the human right activist to be the main reason for her murder.
Estemirova worked at the Chechen office of the Memorial Center, a human rights organization.
Aleksandr Cherkasov, one of her colleagues, told the Interfax news agency:
"When Natalya Estemirova was leaving her house in Grozny [the Chechen capital] at 8:30 a.m. today, she was seized, pushed into a white VAZ-2107 car and taken in an unknown direction."
He also said Estemirova had several meetings planned for the day and when she didn’t turn up, her colleagues sounded the alarm. They learned of the abduction from eyewitnesses near Natalya’s home.
A criminal case into the incident has been launched and currently there are two focuses of the investigation– Estemirova’s professional activity and personal enmity.The 50-year-old began her career as a history teacher. She then turned to journalism and, since the late 1990s, has also been a human rights activist.
Estemirova had earlier worked with Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who was shot dead in Moscow in October 2006, and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who was killed in the Russian capital in January 2009.
 Natalya Estemirova (photo from index.org.ru) |
The North Caucasus region has seen a rise in violence in recent months.
In May, just a month after the ten-year long counter-terrorist operation was lifted in Chechnya, a suicide bomb attack killed four people in the centre of the Chechen capital Grozny. This prompted a joint anti-terrorist mission on the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia.
On June 22, the Ingush president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was seriously injured during an assassination attempt.
Not a week has passed without reports of clashes between militants and police. Just on Monday, five militants were killed in Chechnya in two separate incidents with police.
Ingush parliament speaker Makhmud Sokolov told Interfax he believes the apparent murder of Natalya Estemirova was aimed at worsening the situation in the region and driving a wedge between the Ingush and Chechen people.
“She received many threats”
Estemirova’s colleagues and friends are shocked and say she had received many threats connected to her work.
Oleg Orlov, Head Council at the Memorial center said, “All this time, Natalya was our leading specialist”.
”She was a true human rights activist. She collected data about horrible cases of human rights violations, but she also helped people. She couldn't put up with people being humiliated, offended, having their rights trampled on,” he said.
”Natalia always stood up for each person's rights,” Orlov concluded.
Tatyana Lokshina, deputy director of the organization, said Estemirova was “someone who handled the most sensitive cases, the cases that many other people would not even dare to touch because of the tremendous security risk.”
“We have don’t have a shadow of a doubt that she was killed simply for doing her job,” Lokshina said.
“Time and date of murder are not accidental”
Gisbert Mrozek, the Editor-in-Chief of Russland-Aktuell on-line magazine, says the date for the murder was not chosen at random.
“I was especially shocked by how and when she was killed because I remembered the murder of Anna Politkovskaya who was killed three years ago – as you maybe remember – exactly on the birthday of President Putin and one day before the start-up of the Russian-German governmental consultations in Germany, in the town of Dresden,” he said.
And, he went on, “tomorrow in Germany, near Munich, there will start another regular German-Russian governmental consultations and civil society discussion forum, the Petersburg Dialog, as it was three years ago,” he said.
“So, the killing of Natalya Estemirova today is a sort of an exact political copy of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya,” Gisbert Mrozek concluded.
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