Posted on March 11, 2012 - by Venik
Journalistic death toll in Putin’s Russia
Peter Preston, in today’s Observer, catalogues the deaths of journalists in Russia in the dozen years since Vladimir Putin came to power.
It makes for grim reading, but it merits repeating by as many journalists outside Russia as often as possible:
“In 2011, three journalists dead (including newspaper editor Khadzhimurad Kamalov, shot 14 times as he left his office).
In 2010, two killed; in 2009, five more (including a young reporter from Novaya Gazeta, caught in a hail of bullets). Add four for 2008, one in 2007 and then 2006 as Anna Politkovskaya, the most famous victim of them all, is murdered.
But she wouldn’t forget Yevgeny Gerasimenko – found in his Saratov flat with a plastic bag pulled over his head and computer missing – and nor should we.
Two Russian journalists died in 2005, and three in both 2004 and 2003; but 2002 was a wicked year, with eight lost (including Valery Ivanov, battling editor, shot in the head) and 2001 added another victim.
Putin’s reign of power in 2000 began with six dead reporters and editors: a grim portent, looking back, of bad things to come.”
Preston concludes: “He is elected time and again. Yet a free press seems to mean pitifully little to him. You investigate? You report? You die, unavenged.”
Source: The Observer
Popularity: 1% [?]
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