Анастасия Бабурова

Anastasiya Baburova

30 November, 1983 – 19 January, 2009

 

Anastasia Eduardivna Baburova was a journalist for Novaya Gazeta and a student of journalism at Moscow State University. She was born in Sevastopol, Ukraine.

A member of Autonomous Action, she investigated activities of neo-Nazi groups. She was shot and killed together with human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who was the other of the assassin’s targets.

Baburova’s political activity may be traced back to her having witnessed an attack by neo-nazis on a foreigner, after which she wrote in her diary, “It is difficult to look in the eyes of a Korean student, who has only just been stuck in the temple by two juvenile thugs… they waved ‘Sieg Heil’ towards the tram and ran off.”

Baburova was active in the anarchist environmentalist movement. She participated in the activities of ecological camps, in social fora, including the Fifth European Social Forum in Malmö 2008, organised the ‘Anti-capitalism 2008’ festival, demonstrated widely, and was involved in anti-fascist activities more generally.

In July 2008, Baburova participated in a demonstration against the felling of the Khimkinsky Forest. For her involvement in another protest against the eviction of former pork factory workers from the Moscow factory, ‘Smena’ and impoverished CIS immigrants she would spend a night in prison. The day before her murder, Anastasia appeared at the anarcho-communist unity event ‘Autonomous Action’. Earlier she had written an article on behalf of the journal ‘Avtonom’.

Throughout 2008, Baburova worked on the Editorial team of the Russian newspaper, Izvestiya, and had had dozens of articles published by both ‘Izvestiya’ and ‘Financial News’, particularly on finance. In December 2008, she resigned from this post over the political course of the newspaper, which, according to the British weekly newspaper The Economist, may be characterised by “nationalism, spinelessness and cynicism. She became the fourth Novaya Gazeta journalist to be killed since 2000.

According to Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, the details of the murder indicate the involvement of Russian state security services.

At first it was reported that Baburova had been wounded in an attempt to detain Markelov’s killer, however later Russian law enforcement authorities declared that Baburova was shot in the back of her head. Baburova died a few hours after the attack in a Moscow hospital.

On 26 January 2009, Baburova was buried in the central city cemetery of her home town of Sevastopol.