Interview with Lana Estemirova on her book ‘Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me’

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Speaker

Lana Estemirova – Daughter of a human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, a former Memorial board member murdered in Chechnya for her human rights work in 2009. Lana Estemirova is a graduate in international relations from the London School of Economics and is the presenter of the Trouble with the Truth podcast and works for the Justice for Journalists Foundation.

Full Event Details

‘Please live’ were the words fifteen-year-old Lana meticulously texted to her mother on 15th of July, 2009. At that moment, woman human rights defender Natalia Estemirova was already kidnapped outside their apartment block in Grozny, Chechnya; she was murdered on the same day for her continued stance for the truth.

Lana Estemirova’s book “Please Live” tells a story of being ordinary in extraordinary setting. War permeates Lana’s childhood memories, the history of the Chechen people, and the life of her mother, Natalia Estemirova, a teacher turned human rights defender. “Please Live” is a testament to courage, loss, and motherhood, a story of two women sharing a life together at war, making daily sacrifices and resisting growing pressure in their own way.

Natalia Estemirova was also featured in previous festival event Memorial Monologues which tells the story of 4 human rights defenders who feature on the Memorial Monument in the Iveagh Gardens in Dublin and this will also feature again at this years festival with new defender stories. https://smashingtimes.ie/event/memorial-monologues-the-path-of-memory/2024-10-18/

This event will be promoting the human rights defender by sharing  a story of a life of a woman human rights defender, told by her daughter. This event will tell her story & how she became a dedicated human rights defender, intent on exposing the war crimes, kidnappings, bombings, torture and murders committed by Russian military forces and then Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of the Chechen Republic. Natalia Estemirova’s life, assassination, and the impunity that followed it, helps to understand the non-existing accountability of Putin’s Russia told by her daughter and author Lana Estemirova.

https://www.omahonys.ie/please-live-the-chechen-wars-my-mother-and-me-p-10614709.html

Speaker Biographies:

Lana Estemirova (Speaker) – Daughter of a human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, a former Memorial board member murdered in Chechnya for her human rights work in 2009. Lana Estemirova is a graduate in international relations from the London School of Economics and is the presenter of the Trouble with the Truth podcast and works for the Justice for Journalists Foundation.

Front Line Defenders

Front Line Defenders (FLD) is an international human rights organisation founded in Dublin in 2001, with the specific aim of protecting human rights defenders at risk (HRDs). FLD works to improve the security and protection of human rights defenders and organisations around the world at risk for their peaceful and legitimate human rights work. As identified by human rights defenders themselves, FLD responds to protection and security needs by providing support through grants, capacity building, visibility, networking, and advocacy, at the international, regional and local levels. Front Line Defenders has been awarded the 2018 United Nations Human Rights Prize.

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