On July 15

On this day in ...
... 2009, Natalya Estemirova (right), a 51-year-old journalist and human rights advocate whose documentation had made her "a central source of information on abuses in Chechnya," was found dead of gunshot wounds near a highway in Ingushetia, 50 miles from her home in the Chechen capital city of Grozny, from which she'd been kidnapped hours earlier. Estemirova had worked since 1999 for the human rights group Memorial. She was a co-recipient of the 2005 Robert Schuman Medal, awarded on account of her human rights work by a group within the European Parliament. In the years leading up to the incident, reported The New York Times,

Estemirova focused on kidnappings that she believed had been carried out under the authority of the Chechen president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, who has enjoyed unwavering public support from the Kremlin.

The Times said this past February that investigators believed they knew the shooter, "but have been unable to arrest the suspect."

(Prior July 15 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 17

On this day in ...
... 1996, nurses from New Zealand, Canada, Spain, and Norway, plus a Dutch architect -- all 6 Red Cross aid workers -- were "shot dead as they slept in a hospital in Chechnya," a civil-war-torn region of Russia. The killers were "masked men" who invaded the hospital 11 miles southwest of Grozny at 4 in the morning. The site was "clearly marked" as a "Red Cross centre." No public trial of accused ever was held; the purported mastermind was killed "in a rebel bomb attack" 5 years later.

(Prior December 17 posts are here and here.)

On September 3

On this day in ...
... 2004 (5 years ago today), a lethal siege at a school gymnasium in the Russian republic of North Ossetia ended with explosions inside, while outside, "hostage-takers deliberately fired at the backs of fleeing children as they ran from the building in Beslan, many of them naked and screaming." More than 1,000 persons were believed to have been held in the 3-day standoff between government troops and hostage-takers believed to be "linked ... to Russia's bloody war with neighbouring Chechnya." Well over 300 persons were killed, nearly 200 more missing. (photo credit) The man believed to be the only surviving hostage-taker, Nur-Pashi Kulayev, was convicted and began a life sentence in 2006.

(Prior September 3 posts are here and here.)

On May 27

On this day in ...
... 1907, Rachel Carson (right) was born "in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania." Inheriting from her mother "a life-long love of nature," she studied after college at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, and in 1932 received a master's degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University. As a writer on nature and wildlife she "rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service" in 1936. She is best know for her book Silent Spring (1962), which took on agribusiness and the government in exposing how the use of synthetic-chemical pesticides harmed the natural environment. Carson died from breast cancer in 1964.
... 1996, in Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin entered a ceasefire agreement with Chechnya's rebel leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. The accord was intended to bring an end to 17 months of fighting in the southwestern province of the Russian Federation. But "sporadic violence continues" to this day.