Dissident Voices

ANTON DENISOV / REUTERS

WITNESS STAND: Lidia Yusupova, holding a book by Anna Politkovskaya, is a Nobel nominee for her work on human rights in Chechnya

Lidia Yusupova
Human-Rights Campaigner
The lawyer, 45, has made it her life's work to document allegations of executions, disappearances, rapes and torture in Chechnya. "Mass-scale human-rights violations and state-level terror still are the order of the day," she says. Several times she worked with the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose "murder sent a signal to mop up 'undesirable elements' and tell the public, 'We don't give a damn what you think.'" Violence, Yusupova believes, has its own logic. "Everyone now is endangered, not only those who live in Chechnya, but those who live in Russia as well." Yet...

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