Jumping to Conclusions: The Washington Post’s Unjust Coverage of Russia’s Murders

COMMENTARY

by Gordon Hahn

An October 29^th Washington Post editorial again continued to distort reality in Russia’s North Caucasus.  The editorial follows the Post’s and U.S. mainstream media’s perverted practice of covering the North Caucasus only within the context of’ Russian human rights’ violations.  The Polish Foreign Minister and former Defense Minister Radek Sikorski’s wife, Anne Applebaum, the Post’s main Russia ‘observer’, probably penned the article. 

The Post editorial jumps to judgment in concluding that a single hand is behind the murders of courageous human rights defenders Anna Politkovskaya, Natalya Estemirova, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova as well as Ingushetia opposition leader Maksharip Aushev, head of a Chechen children's charity Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband.  The Post claims that all the above were activists defending human rights in the Caucasus, and this common trait made them a target of forces dispatched or tolerated by Russian Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin. 

The fact is that only a few of these murders are likely to be a single chain, and are likely to be the deadly product of local Caucasus inter-clan and/or political infighting.  Neither Sadulaeva nor her husband was a human rights activist, and Sadulaeva’s husband was a former Chechen militant.  Thus, he and his wife could easily have been targeted by the Caucasus Emirate jihadists or former nationalist separatists among others.

The murder of Markelov and Baburova has several possible versions, as Russia media Watch reported earlier (see Gordon M. Hahn, “ALTERNATIVE SCENARIOS FOR THE MARKELOV MURDER: Going Beyond the Mainstream Media’s Agenda,” Russia: Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch, January 26, 2009)

Markelov often defended anti-fascists and was attacked by skinheads in April 2004.  Shortly after the murder, leader of the liberal Republican Party Vladimir Ryzhov stated that Markelov had recently received threats from neo-Nazis. (See “Murdered Russian lawyer received threats from skinheads, says opposition figure,” BBC Monitoring, 20 January 2009 citing Ren TV, Moscow, 13:30 GMT, 20 January 2009.) Russia media reported on November 4^th that Russian prosecutors any day now would announce indictments of people connected to the neo-fascist community. 

Therefore, it remains unclear just how many of these murders were at all political in nature, and whether they were part of a chain of crimes committed by local law enforcement and rulers, like Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who is barely tolerated by the Kremlin.  There is no basis for the Post’s claim that the Russians “know that Mr. Putin could put a stop to the state-sponsored murders if he chose to; he does not.”  This is a particularly odd assertion since no leader can control such murders, and in light of Putin’s 70% plus approval ratings with the Russian public.  Obviously Russians themselves don’t believe Putin could prevent these murders, let alone that he is responsible for them.

To be sure, the Russian justice system does not work effectively or justly, and neither Putin nor President Dmitry Medvedev have done enough to improve matters.  On the other hand, they are making significant efforts to reform both the Ministry of Internal Affairs (and the military), and there have been some efforts with regard to the courts.  Unfortunately, the FSB and Main Military Intelligence remain untouchables to date, and efforts to reform those could destabilize the whole system.

The Kremlin has no good choices in governing Russia’s North Caucasus.  The region’s political culture and social customs hot-headedly encourage ritualized ‘blood revenge’ and violence between clans and ethnic groups, and its corruption levels are the highest in Russia.  Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov might not have been the best candidate for stabilizing this war-torn Russian republic, but he was probably the best hope for meeting the incredibly difficult challenge there.  Likewise, U.S. forces have found themselves lying next to some nasty bedfellows in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moscow has less choice in the Caucasus given that it is dealing Russian Caucasus’ people on Russia’s own territory which could lead to a failed state with millions of tons of materials for making WMDs.

Perhaps most importantly, one question that might be asked of the Post: Do the Caucasus Emirate’s jihadi terrorist attacks constitute violations of ‘human rights’?   If so, then the Post needs to admit that jihadists’ violations of human rights far outnumber those committed by North Caucasus republic and Russian security and law enforcement organs. 

There certainly can be no justification for the hundreds of jihadist killings of cops, traffic police, and civilian officials. Yet the Post editorial’ have never devoted even one feature article or editorial to the terrorist group, the Caucasus Emirate – even after the present author published numerous articles and one of several major books on the North Caucasus jihad and informed the Post’s opinion page editor about the CE several months ago.

This is not to say that the Post should ignore state violence in Russia, but rather that it should cover all perpetrators of human rights violations and crimes against humanity in proportion commensurate with the scale of their crimes.

Dr. Gordon M. Hahn – Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California; and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007) and Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), and numerous articles on Russian and Eurasian politics.

 

ARTICLE IN QUESTION:

Washington Post
October 29, 2009
Russia's political murders - When was the last time that killings of human rights activists were so blatant, and so common?
EDITORIAL

MURDERS OF human rights activists in Russia have been happening with such frequency that some will be tempted to shrug at the brutal slaying on Sunday of Maksharip Aushev, who campaigned against abuses by the security forces in the Caucasian republic of Ingushetia. Mr. Maksharip AUSHEV was driving on a major highway, in broad daylight, when a car pulled up beside him and delivered a fusillade of bullets. His funeral came two months after that of Zarema Sadulayeva, the head of a children's charity in neighboring Chechnya, and her husband, who were shot and stuffed in a car trunk. Those murders, in turn, followed the July 15 killing of Natalya Estemirova, Chechnya's most prominent human rights activist.

No one has been arrested, much less held responsible, in any of these cases. No one has been charged for the murder last Jan. 19 of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, who were gunned down on a busy street just blocks from the Kremlin. The murderers of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated outside her Moscow apartment three years ago this month, remain at large. These courageous men and women had in common their effort to hold Russian security forces accountable for the extrajudicial killings, torture and rape of innocent civilians in Chechnya, Ingushetia and other Caucasus republics.

Russia leader Vladimir Putin has been shrugging at this gangsterism all along. He disparaged Ms. Politkovskaya, one of the country's most renowned journalists, shortly after her death, and he's had nothing to say about the recent killings. President Dmitry Medvedev has been a little more responsive, expressing regrets and once meeting with editors of the newspaper where Ms. Politkovskaya and Ms. Baburova worked. But he doesn't seem to have much influence over his country's security forces. A year ago Mr. Medvedev replaced the governor of Ingushetia after Mr. Aushev led protests against the killing of an opposition journalist. But the new governor was powerless to stop the latest assassination, which he blamed on "power-wielding structures."

Everyone in Russia knows who he is talking about: the lawless gunmen commanded by the Kremlin-backed ruler of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and the Federal Security Service, which is the successor to Mr. Putin's KGB. Russians also know that Mr. Putin could put a stop to the state-sponsored murders if he chose to; he does not. This is not new, of course. Past Kremlin rulers have used murder to shore up their authority. Not since the time of Joseph Stalin, however, have the political killings been so blatant -- or so chillingly common. 

Comments

[Brandon]

I know that historically, newspapers were a counterweight to balance injustice in our country, most notably during the 1960's civil rights struggles. Sadly, it is apparent that with such rapidly declining readership, this type of sensationalistic "dramatic novel" approach is too prevalent, in addition to the Editor in Chief's obvious connection to the Polish Government.

Using Murder as the first word, comparing these deaths to the time of Stalin, in which Millions of people died in forced labor camps and purges, is so out of proportion it can scarcely be taken seriously. It is reminiscent of the recent accusations which accused President Obama to Stalin, and Adolf Hitler.

Suggesting that any national leader is complicit in violent crimes like this, one must have some serious evidence. In two consecutive days this week in the United States, there was a shooting rampage at Ft. Hood killing more than two dozen soldiers, and another in Florida wounding 5 and killing another. Could anyone suggest that our government allows these to happen, or could stop them at will?