Because you deserve so much more
I saw this on Yahoo!News the other day.
Russian rights trio win top EU assembly prize
AFP - Friday, October 23
STRASBOURG (AFP) - - Three Russian rights defenders landed the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize on Thursday -- but one cited mixed feelings, saying all a murdered fellow-activist got was "a bullet."
The 2009 award of the prestigious prize went to Oleg Orlov, Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Sergei Kovalev and "all the other human rights defenders in Russia."
The award was given in the name of Natalya Estemirova, an activist for the rights group Memorial, who was shot dead in July after being kidnapped in Chechnya.
"Those people who defend human rights must be free to express themselves," said European Parliament head Jerzy Buzek, 20 years after the death of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and founder of Memorial in 1989.
Buzek added that European Union lawmakers "think that we can contribute towards the elimination of fear of violence and other forms of persecution endured by rights activists."
Estemirova 50, a vocal critic of human rights abuses in the Russian southern Caucasus republic of Chechnya, was found shot dead in neighbouring Ingushetia hours after being kidnapped.
"We receive a prize today but Natasha got a bullet," said Memorial president Orlov in a statement.
He expressed mixed feelings because Estemirova and Kovalev were nominated in 2004 but failed to win on that occasion, but said he was personally "flattered."
The prize "has been awarded to the Russian rights movement," he underlined. "I am thankful for that."
Alexeyeva, who heads another collective, the Moscow Helsinki group, said they were "companions-at-arms" with Memorial and praised the European Parliament for espousing "universal human values which I hold dear."
The third winner, Kovalev, who was sent to Soviet prison camps in 1974 and then later into exile, was a founding member of Amnesty International''s Moscow chapter.
Nicola Duckworth of Amnesty said Estemirova's murder had "brought worldwide attention to the risks human rights defenders face in Russia, especially in the North Caucasus."
Estemirova was a close associate of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, assassinated in 2006 in Moscow.
After her killing, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev praised Estemirova for exposing uncomfortable truths -- in the face of international pressure seeking those responsible.
But a Russian court earlier this month ordered Memorial to retract its accusation that Chechnya's controversial leader Ramzan Kadyrov was responsible for the murder of Estemirova.
The Moscow court ordered Orlov -- who had stated that he was sure Kadyrov was guilty -- and Memorial to pay a total of 70,000 rubles (some 1,500 euros or 2,300 dollars) in compensation for damaging the Chechnyan leader's honour and reputation.
Memorial has made two bloodthirsty wars in Chechnya and violent unrest across the Caucasus its specialty.
It also investigates crimes committed by ex-dictator Joseph Stalin in the name of the former Soviet Union.
In December 2008, its premises were turned over by police who seized documents assembled over 20 years relating to Stalinist purges.
A judicial battle was needed before they were returned.
The Sakharov Prize, in its 21st year, comes with a cash award of 50,000 euros and will be handed over at a ceremony on December 16.
Chinese dissident Hu Jia, a campaigner for civil rights, environmental protection and AIDS advocacy, won the prize last year.
Previous winners include Nelson Mandela, Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi and former United Nations chief Kofi Annan -- each also former Nobel Peace Prize winners.
The other shortlisted candidates were Eritrean-Swedish author and political prisoner Dawit Isaak, and Palestinian women's activist Izzeldin Abuelaish.
It made me so proud, but the poignancy of Oleg Orlov’s statement is unforgettable. When I first started reading up on Russia, the human rights issues and movements really struck me, because underneath all my crazy Russophile obsessing (although said crazy Russophile obsessing probably has something to do with it) I really do want Russia to do well, as a country and as a people. So reading about Chechnya and the Caucasus, about Beslan and Nord Ost and bombings and assassinations was really heartbreaking, I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much for a freaking country before. But yeah, I am insane, so whatever DON’T JUDGE ME X<
I came across this poem by Anna Akhmatova some time back:
Последный Тост (The Last Toast)
Я пью за разорённый дом,
За злую жизнь мою,
За одиночество вдвоём,
И за тебя, я пью
За ложь меня предавших губ,
За мёртвый холод глаз,
За то, что мир жесток и груб,
За то, что Бог не спас
I’m drinking to my ravaged home,
My life’s ill-fated path
To loneliness that stays with us,
To you, I raise my glass
To lies on lips disloyal to me,
To cold and deadened eyes
To a world so full of cruelty,
To God’s not saving us
Bleak and beautiful, but I hope to God no-one will ever have the occasion to make a toast like that. I want to hope and I choose to hope, and reading the Yahoo!News article gave me hope. Naïve as it may be, I still believe that organisations like Memorial and people like Anna Politkovskaya, Stanislav Markelov and Natalya Estemirova can bring about changes for the better. They’ve done too much to deserve bullets, but perhaps there is some consolation, however small, that what they fought for and what others continue to fight for is a lot harder to snuff out than human lives. Their deaths are not statistics, they are legacies. And I tell myself I want to fight too, I want to do something, but sometimes it sounds like romanticising an unrealistic ideal. Who am I kidding? What makes me think I can handle something like that? The more I read about these people, the more I feel like a sheltered, spoilt brat. Directionless shit. And I have no-one to blame but myself, because I am not strong enough to truly live up to my ideals. Whatever it is, I am fed up with it.
From now on, I am going suffer for my art.