ANNA POLITKVOSKAJA
Pending coffee is a small gesture for the benefit of a stranger.
Here I thought I could extrapolate the idea by transforming it into a dedication.
The first suspended coffee is for Anna Politkvoskaja.
The reasons are many and in these days when we find ourselves reflecting on events, the lack of a certain type of Journalism with a capital J pulsates and is felt even more distinctly.
The first memory I have of her is related to the 2004 tragedy at the school in Ossetia: Beslan.
A name that has become synonymous with pure horror.
A lot has been said about the history of tea, but since we are talking about coffee, let’s go further. She was determined to go on the scene to try to negotiate, as she had already done with courage for the hostages of the Dubrovka theater. Subsequently, she remained alongside the relatives of the victims, advising them to go to the Strasbourg human rights court and making an important contribution in the fight for justice.
Anna was born in New York, yet she fought to report the violence of the Russian army in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, writing more than two hundred articles for Novaja Gazeta without ever being intimidated by the death threats received. Threats that have proven to be well founded in circumstances that I find particularly terrible.
But she left us the example of what it means to write for a newspaper, of what it means to look for the truth, of what it means not to be manipulated.
And every time we don’t get to the bottom of things, every time we accept flows of clearly piloted information, every time we content ourselves with not asking questions, it is as if we too betrayed her.
She is not the only one, of course, but she has done a lot alone, as long as she has been able.
One of her phrases is emblematic: “The duty of [the] journalist [is] to write what this journalist sees in the reality. It’s only one duty.“
When we realize that this does not happen, let’s try to watch by ourselves.
OPINIONI