NATALYA KHUSAINOVNA ESTEMIROVA

NATALYA KHUSAINOVNA ESTEMIROVA

Natalya Khusainovna Estemirova (28 February 1958 – 15 July 2009) was a Russian human rights activist and board member of the Russian human rights organization Memorial.

Natalia Estemirova was one of the leading human rights defenders in the North Caucasus. Working for Civil Rights Defenders’ partner, Human Rights Centre Memorial, she investigated cases of grave human rights violations in Chechnya. In 2009 she was murdered. Her death is most likely connected to her human rights work, which many considered put her at risk.

Natalia Estemirova was a graduate of the historical faculty of the university in Grozny. Until the late 1990s, she worked as a history teacher at a school in the Chechen capital. She had also worked as a correspondent for local newspapers and TV stations in Grozny before joining Memorial Human Rights Center and frequently contributed to the independent Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta and the news web site Kavkazsky Uzel (Caucasian Knot). When she began working for the Human Rights Centre Memorial, the organisation had not even opened its Grozny office. Natalia Estemirova travelled to the worst hot spots in Chechnya and reported on grave human rights abuses.

In fact, Natalya Khusainovna Estemirova began to engage in human rights activities in 1992 during the conflict between Ossetians and Ingush. In North Ossetia, she participated in the compilation of lists of missing persons, helped organize travel for refugees.

In the fall of 1994, when the First Chechen War began, she left with her daughter for her mother in the Urals. She returned to the destroyed Grozny in 1995.

At the beginning of the Second Chechen War, she was in Adygea. She sent her daughter to relatives in Yekaterinburg, and she returned to Chechnya. At the risk of life and freedom, she took out through checkpoints records and films about what was really happening in Grozny.

Estemirova was one of the first who spoke in detail about the shelling of refugees on the road from Rostov to Baku. Thanks to her, numerous photographs of the victims of rocket fire at the Grozny market were made public. The human rights activist traveled almost all hospitals in Ingushetia and Chechnya, having obtained hundreds of testimonies of numerous victims of the war among children.

Natalia was subjected to direct threats several times but continued her work for the rights of other people. Even though she had a daughter whom she adored, it was hard for Natalia to leave Chechnya, even for a short period of time. A few weeks before her death, Natalia was prepared to leave Chechnya. Local authorities tried to deprive Natalia of her apartment in Grozniy for the second time. 

In the summer of 2009, Natalia intensified her activities after the emergence of new facts about the ongoing terror in Chechnya against local residents. They continued to set fire to houses; without trial, they made ordinary people responsible for the actions of their relatives. Estemirova passed photos of burnt houses, interviewed people.

Estemirova was abducted on 15 July 2009.  from her home in Grozny, Chechnya. Her remains were found with bullet wounds in the head and chest area at 4:30 p.m. in woodland away from the federal road "Kavkaz" near the village of Gazi-Yurt, Ingushetia.

https://crd.org/2012/07/03/natalia-estemirova/