Natalya Khusainovna Estemirova

Natalia Estemirova (Photo Civil Rights Defenders)

28th February 1958 – 15th July 2009

Just over three years ago (July 15th 20098) an award-winning Russian human rights activist and board member of the Russian human rights organisation Memorial. A school teacher in the early 1990s, who became Chechnya’s leading rights activist, investigating and documenting abductions, torture and extra-judicial killing by state security forces. She was abducted and murdered by persons unknown on the 15th July 2009 around 8:30 a.m. from her home in Grozny, Chechnya, as she was courageously working on extremely sensitive cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya. So far no one has been prosecuted for Natasha Khusainovna Estemirova’’s murder.

A WELL-HEELED DICTATORSHIP…

Things may be looking up for the repressive Communist dictatorship in Cuba as an expected scramble to exploit and develop toil reserves in Cuban territorial waters begins. International oil companies from Spain, Norway, Russia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Canada, Angola, Venezuela, and the Peoples Republic of China (oddly enough there are none from the USA) are literally falling over themselves to bring in exploration drilling rigs to search for what may well be substantial oil deposits.

The US Geological Survey (back in 2004) estimated that there may be some 4.6 billion barrels worth of oil, the Cuban authorities disagree and suggest that there may be some 20 billion barrels worth. Either way a major oil discovery would make this communist dictatorship financially independent for the first time since the revolution in 1959 and effectively shatter the US trade embargo and turn Cuba from being a net oil importer into a net oil exporter. While this would be good news for the Cuban people it might not be good news for environmentalists and hard-pressed Cuban civil rights activists as the dictatorship would be flush with cash and effectively unassailable.