Russian Journalists Union: Politkovskaya was killed for her publications

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Russian Journalists Union released a statement in connection with murder of Novaya Gazeta newspaper columnist Anna Politkovskaya. “Person of extraordinary courage and inflexibility – she was and continued to be till her end the example of journalist, who can (and must – she believed herself and requested it from her colleagues) to write from dictation of his or her own conscience, not putting the blame on circumstances and not submitting to them,” it is said in the statement. “Like her colleague Shchekochikhin [famous Russian journalist, who died in 2003], she also was ‘unscrupulous choosing her enemies,’ and the stronger, the meaner, the more revengeful the enemies were, the more reckless and furious she was in her attacks against them. She did not make any compromises, struggling for things, which were true from her point of view; she proved that truth to all, who read her articles and listened to her. She was hated for that, she was threatened and persecuted; she was even poisoned once.”      

“At present, when we should seek finding and punishing both the murderers and the masterminds, let us remember, what Politkovskaya wrote about: Nord-Ost, Beslan, kidnappings and tortures in Chechnya, violations of human rights, authorities’ tyranny and crimes. Let us say openly: she might not be killed for any other things.”     

“That is why; it is so important for society that it is able to receive and could draw conclusions from this question: who did this?”