planet earth looks blue

 Something few people are aware of in the rest of the world are the assassination style killings of journalists and dissidents in Putin’s Russia.  Probably because the murders have never been investigated, no one has been charged, no one is guilty.  There are only coincidences, circumstances, and conclusions to be drawn, and spoken about only behind closed doors.  Demonstrators marched today in memory of two who died in January - reporter Anastasiya Baburova and Stanislav Markelov.  Both were gunned down in the streets of Moscow.  Markelov defended Chechens in rights abuse cases.  Baburova worked for Novaya Gazeta, one of the few papers to openly speak out against the government.  She had commented to her mother a year ago, saying she feared she wouldn’t live long, knowing her job was dangerous (Slackbastard blog).  Police left the protesters alone, so it was a peaceful, mourning march.  

Baburova wasn’t the only one of Novaya’s reporters to predict her own death.  In 2006 Novaya Gazeta lost Anna Politkovskaya.  She covered the Chechynan war and won several awards for her coverage.  In her book, Putin’s Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy, Politovskaya writes about the abuses of the military and the darker practices under Putin’s regime.  She says of him, “…Putin, a product of the country’s murkiest intelligence service, has failed to transcend his origins and stop acting like a KGB officer.  He is still busy sorting out his freedom-loving fellow citizens; he persists in crushing liberty, just as he did earlier in his career.”  She was gunned down in the elevator of her apartment building in the middle of the afternoon.  Her killer left her laying there, even left the gun, tossing it by here body, as if he had no concern of being caught.  

There have been 16 political killings in Russia, during Putin’s reign as President and Prime Minister.