'Anna Politkovskaya: One death from violence is one death too many'

Three years on and the ghost of Anna Politkovskaya still haunts the echelons of power in Russia today.

This week Reporters Sans Frontiers was refused entry to the country to observe the anniversary of her assassination, as a hot-under-the-collar government refuses to acknowledge the international fury of her death and the incompetent investigations that have surrounded it.

Last month the Russian Supreme Court ordered a new investigation into her shooting in the lift of her block of flats - after an earlier trail found three accused of the deed not guilty.

Anna was not known to me, but her actions as an investigative reporter were. She had a long and meritorious track record of getting under official skins while working for the only remaining 'publish and be damned' newspaper in Moscow, Novaya Gazeta, owned and published by the London Evening Standard's  bank-roller, oligarch Alexander Lebedev.

When the notorious Beslan school massacre began in South Ossetia on September 1 2004, Anna, who had made her reputation uncovering injustice in the civil war-torn neighbouring state of Chechnya, had a taste of what was to come: she was allegedly poisoned by a 'Mickey Finn' administered through a mid-flight cup of tea to keep her away from the scene.

After her killing on October 7 2006, police investigations appeared to be half-hearted, but eventually three were hauled before the court - but the suspected brains behind the assassination has never been caught.

The trial was a mockery of justice as we know it, but it did not raise the eyebrows of seasoned Russia-watchers.

Russia is one of the world's most dangerous countries for a working journalist. The death toll among journalists is frighteningly high. Figures vary depending on which organisation is charting the horrors and the criteria they use. 

Wikipedia, for instance, lists 61 who have died from foul play or in mysterious circumstances since 2000. Even conservative estimates now put the figure at 50 murders in 15 years.

According to figures compiled by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), between 1993 (when communism collapsed) and 2008, 49 Russian journalists came to a sticky end – putting the country third on the list of most dangerous countries (behind Iraq and Algeria).

The CPJ's toll reached 50 in January when 25-year-old trainee journalist Anastasia Baburova, who also worked for Novaya Gazeta and who went to the aid of human rights (and the paper's) lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, was killed by a masked gunman while the pair was walking to a metro station. Four Novaya Gazeta journalists have been murdered.

The CPJ says at least 17 of these journalists were killed in the line of duty - 14 were murdered in retaliation for their journalism; two died in crossfire and one was killed while covering a dangerous assignment.

In spite of the variance in numbers, one death from violence is one death too many.

In the great majority of cases, no one has been convicted and sentenced for the murders.

The board of the World Association of Newspapers passed a resolution in June 2007 calling on Russian authorities to investigate journalist deaths more vigorously.

In 2007, the International News Safety Institute said Russia was the country with the second largest number of journalists killed in the previous 10 years.

Death by bullet, poison, strangling, bombing or knife… Russia is plainly not the cosiest place to practice our profession, but in five years when I edited a English-language Russian oil industry magazine and frequently travelled to Moscow, I never came under any threat - although I was decidedly nervous and refused to travel alone (my driver carried a hefty club tucked under his seat).

Do the police pour sufficient resources into investigating the deaths of journalists? My brother-in-law once said to me: "The difference between the police in the West and in Russia is that Western police are there to protect the public. In Russia they are not." That seems to be a neat way of summing things up.

Some years ago, death came close to home when a friend of a friend who was setting up a television station was gunned down in Moscow - his killer or killers were never caught.

Many of the murders of journalists bear the fingerprints of local strong-arm politicians or crime bosses putting a stop to too inquisitive inquiries. 

During my editorship, after I had excised a particularly libelous passage, my managing editor said to me: "No one bothers about suing for libel in Russia - they have other means!" I don’t think he was making too much of a joke.

Robin Morgan is the chairman of the Chartered Institute of Journalists' (CIoJ) Professional Practices Board. He was formerly the business correspondent of the Yorkshire Post and, more latterly, was editor of Oil & Capital, the Russian-published oil industry magazine.

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