In many ways, any exploration into feminist empowerment and news media reform could only take place in a democratic society such as the United States where we practice free press and free speech. However, could this kind of story also be produced in a land with a recent history of Communism and heavy social repression, such as my native country of China or any of its surrounding neighbors?

Well, to honor the uniquely tragic and inspiring true-life tale of Russian journalist and author Anna Politkovskaya, my answer would be yes. Politkovskaya grew up in Moscow and obtained her journalism degree from Moscow State University in 1980. Her career grew into - simultaneously - an indictment of Russia's military and authorities and a defense of poor citizens and civilian victims of government conflicts.

Among her outspoken criticism of post-Soviet Union policies was her opposition to the war in Chechnya. Wikipedia (as of August 30, 2008) describes:

Politkovskaya was widely acclaimed for her reporting from Chechnya and won a number of prestigious awards for her work. She frequently visited hospitals and refugee camps in Chechnya to interview the victims. She said about herself that she was not an investigating magistrate but somebody who describes the life of the citizens for those who cannot see it for themselves, because what is shown on television and written about in the overwhelming majority of newspapers is emasculated and doused with ideology.

Her numerous articles critical of the war in Chechnya described abuses committed by Russian military forces, Chechen rebels, and the Russian-backed Chechen administration led by Akhmad Kadyrov and his son Ramzan Kadyrov. Politkovskaya chronicled human rights abuses and policy failures in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia's North Caucasus in several books on the subject, including A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya and A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya, which painted a picture of brutal war in which thousands of innocent citizens have been tortured, abducted or killed at the hands of Chechen or federal authorities. One of her last investigations was the alleged mass poisoning of hundreds of Chechen school children by an unknown chemical substance of strong and prolonged action, by which they were incapacitated for many months.

As much of an idol and protector as Politkovskaya was to poor people in Russia, she was naturally an inconvenience and enemy to the Russian military and government regime. The growing danger of her fame and notoriety was repeatedly raised in the form of death threats issued to her. These threats were typically produced by the very individuals whose crimes and human rights violations she exposed in her work. On numerous occasions, attempts to carry out the threats were made, and in October of 2006, one such attempt was pulled off successfully by an assassin who fired three bullets into Politkovskaya inside her apartment building elevator. This murder didn't come as a surprise to very many people, not even to close members of her family. Indeed, she already narrowly escaped more than one attempt to take her life in the recent past, establishing both in verbal interviews and in her own actions that any fight to stop or silence her would not be an easy one.

And perhaps, what is as equally fascinating as how her career ended is how her career began. For more than twenty years, she was married to Aleksandr Politkovsky, a famous television host and reporter whose shows for Russian audiences didn't exactly fit her mission of revealing serious, critical pieces on government atrocities and violent oppression. According to the late activist, his work was preventing her from doing her work. Furthermore, she held the responsibility of taking care of their two children, and it would not be until the kids were reaching adulthood that she had the freedom to actively fight for truth, democracy, and peace. After divorcing her husband in 2000, she became the author of several books and a recipient of numerous international awards in humanitarian journalism.

I discovered Politkovsky's incredible story a week ago during the screening and Q&A session of Three Songs About Motherland, a new film directed by Marina Goldovskaya, author of Woman with a Movie Camera and one of Russia's most well-known documentary filmmakers. Goldovskaya was one of the first women in the world to apply the well-rounded level of creative and technical skills that she did to filmmaking. Currently the head of UCLA's documentary program, she also taught at Moscow State University where her students included both Anna and Aleksandr Politkovsky.