One of the world’s bravest and best journalists, Anna Politkovskaya, a special correspondent for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper in Russia, was shot in the head by an assassin today outside her apartment. It appears that one of her enemies put out a contract on her life.
Ms. Politkovskaya, 48, brought news to the world of the nightmares in Chechnya, a Russian province that’s been ripped asunder by war for more than a decade.
She was an outspoken hero in the human rights movement that has helped so many to freedom across the globe, including her own land.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet Union president, told the Interfax news agency that her death “is a blow to the entire democratic, independent press. It is a grave crime against the country, against all of us.”
All of us, indeed. Not just her fellow Russians, but all who care about freedom and the press have suffered a blow.
She should have had many, many more years.
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Copyright 2006 by The Tattoo. All rights reserved.
