Chechnya 'Standing at my mother's graveside, I promised to tell her story'

Lana Estemirova was 15 in 2009, when her mother, the renowned Chechen human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, was kidnapped and murdered.

- Shaun Walker

Bundled into a car as she walked to the bus stop on her way to work, she was driven out of town and then shot five times in the chest and head.

The killing was widely seen as retribution for Estemirova's fearless investigations of murders, kidnappings and human rights abuses in Chechnya, first by Russian soldiers and then by forces loyal to the Kremlin-appointed warlord, Ramzan Kadyrov. Nobody was ever prosecuted for the crime.

Three years later, Lana, Natalia's only child, stood at her mother's grave and made two promises: firstly that she would never take needless risks and would ensure her own future children led boring, stable lives; and secondly that she would write a book about her mother, to ensure that "she will be remembered and her killers will fade like ghosts".

After nearly a decade of work, that book will be published this month. Its title, Please Live, refers to one of the many text messages Lana sent her mother after she went missing, before the news came that she had been killed. Lana also appears in a documentary film about her mother, entitled Natasha, that is released this month.

"I made that promise on my mother's grave when I was 18 years old, the idea that I need to tell her story. More than a decade later, I am able to say: 'Yes, I fulfilled this promise and fulfilled this duty as a daughter to my mother," said Lana, in an interview from Portugal, where she now lives.