Natalya Estemirova is a well-known domestic human rights activist and journalist. She was an employee of the branch of the human rights center "Memorial" in the Chechen Republic. In 2009, she was abducted near her home in the Chechen capital and killed. Her body was found near the federal road known as "Caucasus". The murder of Estemirova caused a great political and public outcry.
Biography of human rights activist
Natalya Estemirova was born in the small town of Kamyshlov in the Sverdlovsk region in 1958. Her father was a Chechen, originally from a village in the Gudermes region, and her mother was Russian.
Natalya Estemirova was a graduate of the Faculty of History at the University of Grozny. Until the end of the 1990s, she worked as a history teacher in one of the schools in the Chechen capital.
She worked on the territory of Grozny at the beginning of the Second Chechen War, in 2000 she becamecooperate with the representative office of the "Memorial" center. In particular, she was engaged in collecting information about the victims during the shelling in the Grozny market.
In 2004, Natalya Estemirova was awarded the "Correct Livelihood" award in the Swedish Parliament. This award, established in 1980 by journalist Jakob von Uexkull, is awarded in the areas of human rights, environmental protection, education and he alth. Among its laureates were Svetlana Gannushkina, Edward Snowden, the human rights organization "Memorial", the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia.
In 2005, the photo of Natalia Estemirova appeared again in all the newspapers, when she and the chairman of "Memorial" Sergei Kovalev were awarded the Robert Schuman medal. This is the French Prime Minister, who is considered one of the founders of NATO and the European Union.
Estemirova herself was a member of the commission on conditions of detention in colonies, pre-trial detention centers and prisons. In particular, her supporters say that she fought against falsified cases, revealed violations in detention centers and other places of deprivation of liberty, fought against torture, and investigated extrajudicial executions and kidnappings.
Human rights activities
In fact, Natalya Khusainovna Estemirova began to engage in human rights activities in 1992 during the conflict between the Ossetians and the Ingush. In North Ossetia, she participated in the compilation of lists of missing persons, helped organize the departure of refugees.
During the years of leadership of Chechnya by DzhokharDudayev was a participant in opposition rallies, at which, as she herself claimed, the whole color of the Chechen nation at that time gathered. In the fall of 1994, when the First Chechen War began, she left with her daughter to her mother in the Urals. Returned to destroyed Grozny in 1995.
In 1997, Estemirova was considered the head of the press service of the Society of Prisoners of Filtration Camps. In total, she filmed 13 programs about unjustly convicted people. She carried out work to alleviate the fate of people who were subjected to torture, and received compensation payments. At the same time, she did not receive money for human rights activities at that time, earning her lessons.
Having been engaged in human rights journalism since 1998.
Second Chechen campaign
During the beginning of the Second Chechen War, the heroine of our article was in Adygea. She sent her daughter to relatives in Yekaterinburg, and she herself returned to Chechnya. In the biography of Natalia Estemirova, important changes occurred after she began to cooperate with the human rights organization Memorial. Risking her life and freedom, the heroine of our article took out records and photographic films about what was really happening in Grozny through roadblocks.
Estemirova was one of the first to tell in detail about the shelling of refugees on the road from Rostov to Baku. Thanks to her, numerous photographs of the victims of rocket attacks on the Grozny market were made public. The human rights activist traveled to almost all hospitals in Ingushetia and Chechnya, obtaining hundreds of testimonies of numerous war victims among children.
Working with "Memorial"
In the spring of 2000, Natalia became an employee of the Memorial Center in Ingushetia. The investigation into the events in Novye Atagi is based on her polls conducted by the journalist. When she got to this village on March 20, it was still blocked by the military, and sweeps continued in it. Estemirova spent a week in it, hiding in the ruins of houses and vegetable gardens, since if a person with a non-local registration was found, she was in serious danger.
Since the end of 2001, she has been covering cases of murders and kidnappings in Chechnya. In addition to her work at Memorial, she was a member of the expert council of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the republic, worked closely with journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in 2006.
Thanks to Estemirova, it became known about the shelling of the high mountain village of Rigakhoy in the Vvedensky district in the spring of 2004.
Heading the Public Council
After a meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov of Memorial employees in February 2008, Estemirova headed the Public Council for Assistance in Ensuring Human Rights and Freedoms, which worked under the Grozny administration.
But already at the end of March, Kadyrov removed her from this post, outraged by the statements of the heroine of our article, made in the program "Islamic Evolution", published on the REN-TV channel. The program was devoted to the obligatory wearing of a headscarf by Muslim women in educational institutions and offices in Chechnya. Kadyrov was dissatisfied with the human rights activist, afterBecause of this, a number of colleagues persistently advised her to leave the republic. Estemirova actually went abroad for several months, but returned to Chechnya in the fall.
Kidnappings
Just at that time, cases of kidnapping of local residents by unknown people, missing in action, became more frequent in the republic. Local security forces carried out punitive operations against relatives and family members of militants, as well as people who were suspected of participating in illegal armed groups. In particular, they burned houses.
Estemirova actively publicized these facts, sought to resist the ongoing lawlessness. In just six months, she recorded cases of arson of 24 houses.
In the summer of 2009, Natalia stepped up her activities after the emergence of new facts about the ongoing terror against local residents in Chechnya. They continued to set fire to houses, without trial they made ordinary people responsible for the actions of their relatives. Estemirova passed on photos of burned houses, interviewed people.
In an interview, she noted that after the abolition of the counter-terrorist operation on the territory of the Chechen Republic, dozens of people have already been kidnapped. In July 2009, Rizvan and Aziz Albekov, father and son, were abducted. Soon they were publicly killed right in the center of the village of Akhkinchu-Borzoy, where all the local residents were gathered. It was thanks to Estemirova that this fact became known to the public.
Murder
The news that Natalya Estemirova had been killed appeared on July 15, 2009. According to available information, she wasabducted near her house in Grozny. Her fellow human rights activists immediately raised the alarm when the heroine of our article did not come to the meeting. They interviewed neighbors, among whom they found witnesses who saw from the balcony how Estemirova was forced into a white VAZ, while she herself screamed that she was being kidnapped.
Soon, the head of the press service of the investigative committee of the prosecutor's office, Vladimir Markin, said that at 16:30 Moscow time the body of a journalist with gunshot wounds to the chest and head was found in the forest 100 meters from the Kavkaz road in Ingushetia.
The woman was just over 50 years old. Why Natalya Estemirova was killed is not known for certain, but most suspect that the reason was her persistent investigations into kidnappings in Chechnya and their extrajudicial execution.
The heroine of our article was buried in the village of Koshkeldy on the territory of the Gudermes region in Chechnya.
The reaction of the authorities
The head of state Dmitry Medvedev spoke about Estemirova's murder. He stated that he was outraged by this crime, instructed the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, to do everything necessary for a professional and objective investigation. At the same time, the head of state linked her murder with human rights activities.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov called the murder of a human rights activist monstrous. He promised to personally follow the investigation, as well as sort it out unofficially, in accordance with Chechen traditions.
Employees of "Memorial" accused Kadyrov himself of involvement in the murderjournalists, he himself repeatedly denied this.
Newspaper journalists also stated that this was a political assassination. According to Dmitry Muratov, Estemirova herself understood that lately her life was under threat.
Investigation progress
Two criminal cases were opened on the fact of Estemirova's murder. On the territory of Chechnya because of the kidnapping, and in Ingushetia because of illegal arms trafficking and murder. On July 16, they were combined into one case, it was transferred to the Main Investigation Department for the Southern Federal District. According to investigators, her professional human rights activities were the key motive for the crime.
Answering the question of who killed Natalya Khusainovna Estemirova, in the summer of 2011 the investigation stated that it considered the Chechen militant Islam Uspakhadzhiev, who took revenge on the journalist, to be guilty. In 2013, it became known that law enforcement agencies suspected Alkhazur Bashaev, considering revenge for the journalist's publications as the cause of the crime.
However, at present, the investigation of the criminal case has not been completed. The trial of the accused did not take place.
Private life
Little was known about Natalia Estemirova's family. According to her friend Marina Litvinovich, the journalist's husband was killed a long time ago, she was left a widow.
She is survived by her daughter Lana, who is now 24 years old. After the murder of her mother, human rights activists organized a fundraiser in her favor, as the girl was left an orphan.
Uthe heroine of our article has a sister, Svetlana, who permanently lives in Yekaterinburg.
