Anna Nemtsova’s Foreign Policy article on Natalia Estemirova’s murder is one of those pieces I read with a swelling lump in my throat.
Many times after that, I would call her to see how things were in Russia’s forgotten war zone. Natasha, as we called her, would always quickly reply: “They abduct people by the dozens, they burn their houses, they torture guerrillas’ relatives, kick people out of their apartments — something has to be done, something has to be done to help them.” Who are they? I would ask her. “Come over, I will tell you.”
Well, on Tuesday, they came for Natasha. At 8:30 that morning, as she walked out of her house, she was dragged into an unmarked white Lada, screaming vainly for help.
Just like one of the stories she so doggedly pursued. And of course, we know how this one ends:
Because it always ends the same way.
They found her body later that day, in nearby Ingushetia, riddled with bullets. This, unfortunately, was the Chechnya that she knew all too well, the place of thuggery, violence, and corruption that most of the rest of the world has been content to forget. Just recently Moscow declared that the war there is over. Well, it may not be war, but it remains as lawless as a war zone. Abductions and killings by them are rising.
Nemtsova adds something I didn’t know about Estemirova:
Until this week, Natasha had a simple rule: She never gave up her investigations until she knew for certain that nothing else could be done. That became her practice from an early age, when she was a reporter. Before the wars started, she had been a history teacher. Back in the 1990s, when the violence began, she reported 13 documentary stories for local television stations. “That was when I became a human rights activist at heart. When my husband died in war, my heart hardened,” she said. That was all she told me about her personal life; there was none. She never liked talking about what happened to her husband.
So that is how she became involved in human rights work. It makes a lot of sense, actually. What a remarkable woman. What a god-awful loss. Words fail.
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