RUSSIA’S HUMAN rights record last night came under severe criticism after one of the country’s most famous human rights campaigners was abducted from her home in Chechnya and brutally murdered.
Natalia Estemirova was seized by four unknown men yesterday morning as she left for work. Neighbours at her house in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, heard her shout: “I’m being kidnapped.”
Her body was found near Gazi-Yurt village, in neighbouring Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head and chest, police said, adding that her corpse had been dumped on the main road.
Human rights activists expressed outrage at her murder, reminiscent of the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist, writer, and bitter Kremlin critic shot dead outside her Moscow apartment in 2006.
Ms Estemirova (50) was a close friend of Politkovskaya’s. The two had collaborated on numerous investigations. Both were scathing opponents of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin president.
“Natasha was at the forefront of some of the most intense human rights investigations in Chechnya,” said Allison Gill, director of Human Rights Watch in Russia. “She was targeted because of her work. I have no doubt her killing was to silence her.
“I think the human rights situation is in crisis in Russia,” she added.
Operating out of a small office in Grozny, Ms Estemirova doggedly pursued stories of human rights abuses in the face of official intimidation and hostility. She made no attempt to hide her work. Her office near the newly renamed Putin Avenue was well known.
She recently collaborated on two damning reports into punitive house burnings and extra-judicial killings in Chechnya, allegedly carried out by Kadyrov’s forces.
The reports documented how on July 2nd his troops allegedly shot 20-year-old Madina Yunusova and her husband near Grozny.
“Natasha was always involved in the most sensitive cases. She knew what she was doing. She knew the risks,” Shamil Tangiyev, a former colleague said last night. “She was extremely brave. It was in her nature to be an activist.”
Ms Estemirova spoke about abuses in Chechnya at a gathering, organised by human rights group Front Line, in Dublin in September 2003. “I suggest that whenever a human rights defender is suffering, we should hold massive press gatherings to free the defender and lead proper investigations into their arrests,” she told the Dublin forum.