Anna Politovskaya remembered 6 years on

(Vatican Radio)Tributes were paid Sunday to Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was killed exactly six years ago by a still unknown gunman in an attack that critics have linked to her journalistic work.


As Russian president Vladimir Putin celebrated his 60th birthday Sunday, friends and relatives gathered to publicly remember Politkovskaya in the capital Moscow, while new questions were being asked as to why those who killed the reporter have not been sentenced by authorities.


The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement it is "gravely concerned" by what it called "the complete absence of justice" in her killing, despite government pledges to solve the crime.

Only a retired police lieutenant colonel was indicted on charges of complicity in the murder, but Politkovskaya's supporters are angry that authorities made a deal with the suspect to reveal the mastermind behind close doors.

Politkovskaya, was shot dead exactly six years ago in the lobby of her apartment building in downtown Moscow.


As a reporter of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper she frequently criticized the Kremlin and revealed human rights abuses in Chechnya.


She said in an interview that "what upsets her is the fact that this work seems a burial party."


Politkovskaya added, "risk is part of the journalistic profession. The important question is: Does anything change because of what we have written or because we have suffered as a result of writing it? Has anything changed for the better in our society?"


Her supporters try to keep her memory alive by awarding the so-called Anna 'Politkovsakaya Award 2012'
to Marie Colvin, the respected Sunday Times journalist, who was killed in Syria earlier this year.

"She had the same mission in life like Anna," explained Politkovskaya's sister, Elena Kudimova. "[That mission was] to report the horrors of war with accuracy and without
prejudice."

The Foreign Editor of The Sunday Times, Sean Ryan, praised the decision to award his late colleague. "It is tremendous honour for Marie to be mentioned in the same breath as Anna," he said. "We did a little bit of work with Anna before she died through our Moscow correspondent, Ryan added.

"And we were devastated when the news of Anna's murder broke. I think it is a terrible thing for any newspaper to face the death of a journalist and particular so if we feel that the journalist has been deliberately targeted for what they were writing."



The U.S. State Department has described Politkovskaya as" a champion of human dignity." Listen to this report by Stefan Bos