Advancing Political Truth

In war, the first thing to die is the truth, Peter Schreiber, director of the Berlin-based Peter Weiss Foundation for Arts and Politics, likes to say.

Even more important is the all-pervasiveness of the lie in political discourse, he says, especially in the 21st century. That is why the foundation is making an appeal for a worldwide reading Tuesday to raise awareness of lying in politics and strengthen the fight against it.

The event this year, called the "Second Anniversary of the Political Lie," will honor murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya by reading a selection of her works. Around 50 institutions in 10 countries are set to participate.

"With this event, we want to bring more awareness to the issue and strengthen the fight against it," said Schreiber.

Last year, the foundation marked the third anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq with a worldwide reading. On March 20, 2006, Eliot Weinberger's 2005 text collage, "What I heard about Iraq," was read in 47 venues around the world, marking the first "Day of the Political Lie."

And in the wake of the murder of Politkovskaya last October, Schreiber said it was obvious that her works should be selected for this year's event.

"In her reports, Anna Politkovskaya described the truth of the catastrophe of the war in Chechnya, a war that has gone on far from the public eye," he said. "She was trying to bring the truth to light and was killed for it."

Long-time critic

This year, texts from her book called "A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya" will be read on the radio, at public venues, public and private gatherings and schools around the world. Specifically, the readings will be from two chapters in the 2003 book: "Machkety: A Concentration Camp with a Commercial Streak" and "Special Operation Zyazikov."

The chapters portray a landscape of torture and murder, condemn the cynicism of bureaucrats, depict the misery and desperation of a civilian population that is torn between the army and rebels and offer a nightmarish picture of the climate of state-fueled fear and repression in Russia.

Politkovskaya, a long-time critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, worked for a number of Russian newspapers, including the small opposition paper Novaya Gazeta, and often wrote about how the war in Chechnya was far from over, disputing the official line. Instead, she focused on human rights violations and on the civil population caught in the middle of two warring parties.

She had faced threats and intimidation. Yet she refused to have a bodyguard in the same way she refused to go into exile. In 2004, she was the victim of a poisoning attempt. In October, an unknown gunman shot her dead in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment block. Material she had collected for her last article subsequently disappeared.