Le génocide oublié

A Journalist in Chechnya
An interview with Anne Nivat

August 2002

Anne Nivat is the Moscow correspondent for the French newspaper, Libération. Her book, Chienne de Guerre : A woman Reporter Behind the Lines of the War in Chechnya (Public Affairs, 2001) tells of how she managed to do what almost no other journalists have done : she covered the war in Chechnya from within Chechnya. Dressed as a Chechen woman, she traveled with civilians, her satellite phone strapped to her belly. She spent the winter of 1999-2000 in Chechnya, surviving the height of the war and left only when the Russian Federal Security Services detained her. She returned to Chechnya several times afterwards and speaks here about her most recent trip in June 2002.

• Covering the war in Chechnya
• Worse than a year ago
• Zachistka, "cleaning-up operation", in Mesker-Yurt