Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Haiku 072209

bugs lay siege
on the street lamp
summer night


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Recently, we read the following:

International Press Institute: “Russian Editor-in-Chief Fears Killers of Human Rights Activist and Journalist Won’t Face Justice

“A Russian editor-in-chief has expressed concern that the killers of a prominent human rights activist and journalist brutally slain on 15 July will never face justice.

“ ‘Unfortunately the Russian authorities, although using hard wording to condemn such crimes, do almost nothing to find their organisers, bring the cases to court and punish the killers,’ Galina Sidorova, editor-in-chief of the Russian monthly Sovershenno Secretno, and a member of the IPI board, told IPI researchers.

”Natalia Estemirova, known for her fearless exposure of human rights abuses in Chechnya and a regular contributor to the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was abducted on the morning of 15 July in the Chechen capital, Grozny, while she was on her way to work. Witnesses saw her being forced into a car by four men and heard her shout that she was being kidnapped. About nine hours later, her lifeless body was found in the neighbouring province of Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head at short range.

“ ‘Estemirova is the fourth journalist to be killed in Russia this year, in what appears to be a concerted move to eliminate critics of the government,’ said IPI Director David Dadge.


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And we thought:

…. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Still, in non-communist Russia, to write about human rights abuses is to live dangerously. Journalists have become victims themselves of the mindless violence they report to the world....



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