Monday October 9, 2006

All of the newpapers comment today on the murder on Saturday of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya (news story here), whose pieces in the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta did much to uncover irregularities in Russian military undertakings in Chechnya.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 09.10.2006

Kerstin Holm notes, "On the day that Anna Politkovskaya died, President Putin, much reviled by journalists, was celebrating his 54th birthday with friends in Petersburg; a Libra like the Chechnyen Premier. It was as though with the bloody act, a vassal was bringing his master the head of his arch enemy as a present."

Reinhard Veser draws attention to Michael Gorbachev who, in the context of Politkovskaya's murder, praises the "positive process" going on in the northern Caucasus. "Gorbachev's statement is of particular importance because in June, he became a major share-holder of the paper Novaya Gazeta, which previously had belonged exclusively to its employees. At the time, several journalists, Anna Politkovskaya among them, expressed the concern that this could be the beginning of the end of the paper, which appears twice a week, and which had been considered the last bastion of free press in Russia. Recently Gorbachov, who used to be a major critic of Putin, has been increasingly supportive of him in public."


Berliner Zeitung 09.10.2006

Katja Tichomirowa portrays Politkovskaya and the local reactions to her murder: "For many Russians, including a good number of her colleagues, Anna Politkovskaya was someone who fouled her own nest. Nationalist circles considered her an enemy of the Russian people. It would be wrong to expect outrage, horror or even sadness at her death from this group of self-proclaimed Russian patriots. But on the other hand, very illuminating comments have come from people like Dmitri Rogosin, the left-nationalist MP from the 'Motherland' party. He called the 'physical elimination of Politkovskaya' a 'blow to Russia's reputation.' But the courageous woman also had supporters at home: around 500 people demonstrated on Sunday against her murder. 'The Kremlin has killed freedom of speech' read one banner."


Die Tageszeitung 09.10.2006

Klaus-Helge Donath comments on the murder on the front page. "With Politkovskaya, the other, the moral Russia has been dealt its death blow. The Kremlin's calculations have paid off. The crimes in North Caucasus have been silenced and suppressed, or equated with stability. Even the West has let itself be lulled. The topic has disappeared from the joint agenda with Russia. In its place, fear reigns in the West – not least the fear that a new, self-assured Moscow could screw tight the energy spigot if its inhuman policies at home and in neighbouring countries are criticised. And the Western business world plays along as well, playing it all down, even though it knows better. It hopes for fat profits from the booming, hungry Russian economy."


Der Standard 09.10.2006

The paper refers to an anonymous report which claims "the police know the identity of the murderer, because he was unmasked and failed to disengage the video cameras over the house door. On Sunday, it was assumed that, given this unprofessionalism, the executioner has probably already been done away with by his bosses."

The paper prints an interview from 2005, in which Politkovskaya talks about her work in Chechnya. "Of course I am not alone. I have informants, who tell me what's going on in situ. And I feel responsible for these people. Sometimes it's fatal to be an informant for me. And I don't say that lightly. I wrote an article about corruption among pro-Moscow bureaucrats in Chechnya. The government immediately launched a suit against me and my paper. A few weeks later, I learned that the man who was supposed to testify for me in court had died. So again: people are really paying with their lives."

Eduard Steiner illustrates the working conditions of journalists in Russia with a joke. "Hitler and Napoleon are watching a military parade on Red Square. Hitler says, 'With those missiles, I would have won the war.' 'And with this press, the world would never have heard about Waterloo,' says the little Frenchman after reading Pravda." And in a portrait of the 48 year old journalist, Steiner writes, "Her genre was investigative journalism and reporting. And she did the truly unthinkable: out of conviction that misery is not just an anonymous general phenomena, but rather something that is caused by particular individuals, she named names. That's the point beyond which danger in Putin's Russia becomes deadly. It's not the criticism itself that is dangerous, what's dangerous is the violation of anonymity."


Der Tagesspiegel 09.10.2006

On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin will be meeting with Angela Merkel in Germany. Claudia von Salzen writes there's going to be lots to explain. Good cooperation with Russia is important for Germany but "a dialogue in which all criticism falls prey to self-censorship is worth nothing. The murder of Anna Politkovskaya has to be brought up at the meeting in Dresden – as well as the climate of intimidation in Russia, which made the deed possible in the first place."


In other stories...

Die Welt 09.10.2006

Eckhard Fuhr writes on Günter Grass' appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which ended on Sunday. In a discussion with Giovanni di Lorenzo, the chief editor of Die Zeit, Grass accused Frank Schirrmacher (co-publisher and cultural editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), of "sensationalising his SS 'confession' (more here). But he, Grass, in fact 'confessed' nothing in the interview in the FAZ that set off the journalistic earthquake. Everything is written in his book 'Beim Häuten der Zwiebel' (peeling the onion), which the Republic's literary critics could have read for months. The attempts by di Lorenzo to dissuade Grass from massacring his respected FAZ colleague on sovereign Zeit territory, were for nought. Grass wants to sink in his teeth."


Saturday October 7, 2006

Die Tageszeitung 07.10.2006

Eberhard Seidel is fed up with commentators in the German cultural pages and in the tabloid Bild Zeitung whose anti-Islamic warnings have Germany in a state of alarm. "Islamism in Germany is no feuilletonistic event, no field for cultural debate. It's a concrete set of facts, comprised of organisations, actors, meeting places, publications and networks. All of this can be uncovered through investigative research... Yet the nation's alarm-criers have nothing to show for themselves in terms of exhaustive research. Worse than that, none of them came to the defence of the two Berlin journalists Ali Yildirim and Claudia Dantschke. For over ten years, these two have come up with almost all the key findings on the Islamic scene in Germany. Without their work, there would have been no ban of the radical Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir, or the anti-Semitic hate organ Vakit. And for over ten years, they and their informers have been subjected to knife attacks, gruelling and costly law suits, economic sanctions, intimidation and violent assaults."