World Press Freedom Day 2007

This is an extract from ANOTHER SKY: VOICES OF CONSCIENCE FROM AROUND THE WORLD, an English PEN book edited by Lucy Popescu and Carole Seymour-Jones, published in the United Kingdom by Profile, April 2007.

The award-winning Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered on 7 October 2006 and it is widely believed that her death is linked to her fearless reporting, particularly on the Chechen wars. She was a special correspondent for Novaya gazeta, Moscow, and her writing about Chechnya include the books A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya (2001) and Putin’s Russia (2004). A Russian Diary, the book Anna was working on at the time of her untimely death, is due to be published by Harvill Secker in 2007. Politkovskaya acted as a mediator in the Nord-Ost theatre siege in Moscow in 2002. Two years later she fell seriously ill as she attempted to fly to Beslan to cover the hostage crisis there, leading to speculation that she had been deliberately poisoned to stop her from reporting on the crisis. Politkovskaya was recognized worldwide for her championing of human rights.