Russia’s Novaya Gaeta newspaper has published the last article written by murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya. It’s a short, yet unsparing, look at the use of torture on Chechens accused of terrorism. Even if you haven’t been following Russia’s long, brutal anti-terrorist campaign in Chechnya, the piece rings some depressingly familiar themes. The New York Times has a translation. It’s worth a read:
Before me everyday are dozens of files—copies of the criminal cases of people jailed for “terrorism” or of those still under investigation.
Why is the word “terrorism” in quotation marks? Because the overwhelming majority of these people are designated terrorists. The practice of “designating terrorists” did not simply supplant in 2006 some kind of earnest anti-terrorist war. It came to breed on its own potential terrorists and a desire for vengeance. When prosecutors and the courts work, not for the sake of the law, but on political commission and with the only goal of providing good reports for the Kremlin, then criminal cases are baked like pancakes.
An assembly line producing “open-hearted confessions” effectively guaranties good data on the war on terror in the North Caucasus. …
The practice of designating terrorists is the area in the sphere of “counterterrorist operations in the North Caucasus” where, head to head, two ideological approaches clash: Are we, the lawful, fighting against the unlawful? Or, are we battling “their” lawlessness with “ours?” This clash of approaches is guaranteed to exist for the present and future. The result of this “designation of terrorists” is the increase in number of those who won’t put up with it.
