Word: chechnya
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...members of the upper house of parliament are no longer elected but appointed; no new political parties can exist or be started, unless endorsed by the Kremlin; it is no longer possible for independent candidates to stand in constituencies for election to the Duma. The continuing conflict in Chechnya has given rise to a slew of allegations about human-rights abuses. And there's a strong impression - real or not - that free speech is potentially dangerous once again, especially if it is used to openly criticize the President or highlight alleged abuses taking place under his aegis...
...Russians are falling silent; indeed, a new generation of dissidents has come into being. For many of them, such as Lidia Yusupova, the war against a separatist movement in Chechnya, which has rumbled on with appalling cruelty since 1994, has been a spur to activism. Yusupova helps victims of the violence in Chechnya and has assisted in documenting atrocities there, a job that has won her two human-rights awards and a nomination for this year's Nobel Prize. She has no illusions about the risks involved. "Dying sooner or later is not the issue," she says...
Important though the conflict in Chechnya has been in focusing activism, Putin's political opponents have a long list of other grievances. They include allegations of torture by the police, pressure on journalists, and what opponents see as an erosion of Russia's democratic institutions. The ranks of the new dissidents are swelled by unlikely recruits - men such as Alexei Kondaurov, who, as a major-general of the kgb's Fifth Main Directorate, was responsible for crushing ideological subversion in Soviet days. Kondaurov is now a member of the Duma's Communist Party faction, and campaigns tirelessly on behalf...
...Society, closed down after its newsletter reprinted speeches by Chechen separatist leaders. Amnesty International contends that shuttering the society "appears to be the latest move in a carefully calculated strategy to get rid of an organization that has been outspoken on behalf of victims of human-rights violations in Chechnya." Dmitrievsky himself says that Russia is veering away from democracy and back toward authoritarianism. "It's obvious after the Politkovskaya murder that no one is immune. We're all walking under a falling ax now," he told Time...
Paradoxically, the writer and her subject were doomed to the same fate: Anna became Chechnya. In the outskirts of the public sphere, silence still reigns autocratic and unchallenged...