ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA
JOURNALIST, NOVAYA GAZETA :
I have a lot of links with Maskhadov’s people. My point of view was Maskhadov needed to go to these bandits and say to them openly, please don’t do it. Please free all the kids. After midday until evening, of course, I discussed all these details about maybe Maskhadov’s future departure to Beslan. In absolutely the open air of mobile phones.
WARK:
What happened to you when you got on the plane to Rostov?
POLITKOVSKAYA:
One boy, I didn’t know him, gave me this cup of tea. I drank it and after ten minutes, I began to feel very, very bad. After that I heard only two, three words. The crew beat me on the face and asked me, cried to me, “Please don’t die. Don’t die.” After that I discovered myself in the hospital.
WARK:
Did anyone say to you that you had been poisoned?
POLITKOVSKAYA :
Doctors said God bless you, and you are with us. You were poisoned.
WARK:
You talk about an information vacuum at Beslan, what exactly do you mean?
POLITKOVSKAYA:
Our TV channel gave society only official information. And people, relatives of hostages were out of this information. They were in a vacuum. They didn’t know what happened. What would happen in the next minutes, in the next hours.
WARK:
Is this the Kremlin pressuring the media, or do you think the media are guilty of self-censorship?
POLITKOVSKAYA:
My colleagues tried to be only in the way of the official information. It was real self-censorship, but it’s only from one hand. In the other hand, the staff administration of the President pushed a lot, during these two days, the hands of mass media.
WARK:
Do you think the West simply accepts President Putin’s policies without criticism?
POLITKOVSKAYA:
Putin is very influenced by the Western opinion. He doesn’t like to think about society and civil society in Russia, about points of view of civil society here. So, it means that only the West now could change him, could change him from tyranny to democracy.
