NEWSWATCH: A March of Mourning for Boris Nemtsov

Nemtsov March of Mourning

[“A March of Mourning for Boris Nemtsov” – Masha Lipman – The New Yorker – March 1, 2015]

Masha Lipman covers the march of mourning following the assassination of Boris Nemtsov and reacts to his killing, including recalling other assassinations during the Putin era:

Boris Nemtsov was among the organizers of a mass protest action called “The Spring,” planned for Sunday, against Putin’s policies and the war in Ukraine. It became a march of mourning instead. There were an estimated fifty thousand people in attendance. … It was drizzling and gloomy as we waited for an hour and a half to pass through metal detectors, and then we marched for another hour to the bridge next to the Kremlin where the assassin shot six bullets at Nemtsov’s back, and then disappeared.

Almost a decade ago, there was another protest like this one. In the fall of 2006, a rally in Moscow was planned to protest the ugly anti-Georgian campaign incited by the government. But the day before the event was to take place, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and human rights advocate, was murdered, and that protest also became an act of mourning. There have been other political assassinations and physical attacks since Politkovskaya was shot in her apartment building. Stanislav Markelov, a human rights lawyer, and journalist Anastasia Baburova were killed in 2009 as they walked down a street in central Moscow. That same year, Natalia Estemirova, a human rights activist and journalist, was shot in North Caucasus. Oleg Kashin, a prominent Russian journalist and blogger, nearly died from a beating in 2010.

Nemtsov’s murder, however, is the highest-profile and most purely political assassination that has been seen in Putin’s Russia. …

Click here for “A March of Mourning for Boris Nemtsov”

 

[featured image is adapted from image at voanews.com]

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