We hereby wish to remind the public that, one year ago, Ana Politikovskaja, one of the leading Russian journalists, was killed in the center of Moscow, in front of the building she used to live in. She was well known for her harsh, uncompromising criticism of the state establishment and President Putin and his war in Chechnya, which was being referred to as the reinforcement of the constitutional order in Chechnya. That was, in fact, a war against the civilian population, Ana insisted. To this day, her assassins have not been found, although it is quite clear that she fell as a victim of the state terror of Putin’s state machinery of death. Security forces, the very same death squadrons who had been killing Chechen civilians, also killed Ana. The murder of a journalist was a crucial moment, when Putin’s Russia pursued on its course of repressive policy and totalitarian regime.
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists, seated in New York, points out that Politikovskaja was the forty-second journalist to have been killed in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union and that this was the twelfth in a series of murders that have occurred since the year 2000, when Vladimir Putin came to power.
On this occasion, we express solidarity with our friends, the Russian pacifists and anti-militarists, anti-Putin, anti nationalist activists, as well as with the peace movement of Chechnya.
We refuse to accept any similarity between Serbia and Russia, we reject both of these nationalisms, because both countries have been persecuting the others and the different, especially journalists and defenders of human rights and peace activists pledging for a radical discontinuity with the state organized criminal past. We refuse to become a Russian province. We hereby demand from the Russian authorities that the organizers, initiators and executors of the assassination of the journalist Ana Politikovskaja be punished most severely.
On the other side of the world, the military junta in Burma that have been in power ever since 1966, cracked down on peaceful demonstrations headed by Buddhist monks with brutal military and police forces. Military units arrested participants of rallies and tortured them in prisons, while the monks were confined to their pagodas.
We remind the public of the fact that the former state alliance of and Montenegro exported arms to Myanmar, in spite of the EU and US sanctions. In the course of 2004, 36 howitzers of domestic production were sold to Myanmar, and another contingent of 54 howitzers in 2005. Yugoslavia began exporting arms, the industry of death, to Myanmar, as early as 1953, and this practice has been uninterrupted, thus supporting the repressive regime of the junta in the stifling of democratic changes.
We demand that the state of Serbia admit accountability for the violation of EU sanctions and that the responsible figures from the Ministry of Defense be punished.
We demand from the military authorities in Burma to step down from power and to respect the will of the citizens expressed in the elections of 1992, which Aung Su Chi won. We demand that military regime in Myanmar immediate and uncanditional release Aung San Su Kyi, the oppozitional leader from hom imprisonment.
All those who wish to join our vigil are welcome do so on Monday, 8th October, 2007, in Republic Square, from 14:00 to 15:00, in mourning and silence, in an action of international solidarity with these two non-violent resistance movements.
Women in Black
Belgrade
7th October 2007
