Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian correspondent of the newspaper Nowaja Gazeta. Despite of great resistance and the danger of her life she didn’t give up the reporting on the Chechen conflict. Russian correspondent Anna Politkovskaya had covered the Chechen war for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta since 1998. In her articles and books she described the numerous instances of cleansing, rape, execution and torture in this battered region, putting herself in great danger while doing her job. A mother of two children she repeatedly received threats on her life in Russia and had to be placed under police protection. In the Moscow musical theatre hostage crisis in 2002 she acted as mediator. In September 2004, when she prepared to cover the hostage taking in Beslan, Anna Politkovskaya was poisoned in an attempt to stop her from publishing reports contrary to the official version. However, two weeks later she was back on the job. She believed that “risk is part of the job. Either you do your work, knowing what you’re in for, or you leave it altogether.” Anna Politkovskaya was shot in Moscow on October 7th, 2006.
Awards:
- 2007: Guillermo-Cano-Prize (UNESCO-Prize for freedom of press; posthumously)
- 2007: Geschwister-Scholl-Prize (posthumously)
- 2007: Honorary membership of the Erich Maria Remarque-Society, Osnabrück (posthumously)
A park in Milan, Italy has commemorated Anna Politkovskaya since 2013, and Ferrara has Via Anna Politkovskaya. A street in Tbilisi is also named after her. Half a dozen memorial sites exist in France.
Since she had not previously been honoured in Russia, a garden opposite the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta was dedicated to her in Moscow in 2018. The ambassadors of Germany, Spain, Latvia, Great Britain, and a representative of the US Embassy planted flowers in the "Anna Gardens."
In October 2024, the square in front of the Zeit Foundation in Hamburg-Rotherbaum was named after Politkovskaya, and a memorial stone was unveiled.