FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Brant Houston, Executive Director, 573-882-2042, brant@ire.org
Oct. 9, 2006
IRE calls for government response to violence against Russian journalists
COLUMBIA , Mo. — Investigative Reporters and Editors is outraged by the murder of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and calls upon the Russian government to address and correct the environment of hostility and blatant attacks upon journalists there.
Politkovskaya was shot to death in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow over the weekend, news agencies reported. Her critical coverage of the Chechen conflict and other investigative work had brought her praise, but numerous death threats followed.
The Interfax news agency said police reported that Politkovskaya had been shot and that a pistol and four bullets were found in the elevator. The Associated Press reported that prosecutors planned to begin an investigation.
Last spring, Politkovskaya spoke at an investigative journalism conference in Sweden and expressed concern about whether she would be able to re-enter her country. In discussions with IRE, she had spoken about appearing at IRE conferences and working on forging better ties between IRE and Russian journalists. She turned down requests to appear at the Global Investigative Journalism conferences in Denmark because of the demands of her work.
"We mourn the loss of a great investigative journalist and colleague," said James Grimaldi, president of the IRE board. "Anna Politkovskaya was the
13th journalist murdered since Vladimir Putin took power. Her killing is another tragic example of how investigative reporting in Russia has become
a deadly enterprise. The violence against journalists must stop. And the government must move urgently to protect a free press."
IRE is a nonprofit journalism training organization and professional association with 4,500 members in more than 20 countries.
Politkovskaya, special correspondent for the independent Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta, reported extensively on human rights abuses by the Russian military in Chechnya. She was threatened, jailed, forced into exile, and poisoned during her career, the Committee to Protect Journalists said its research showed. The CPJ also condemned the fatal attack on Politkovskaya.
Executive Director of CPJ Joel Simon said, "Anna Politkovskaya was uncompromising in her pursuit of the human story behind the ongoing war in Chechnya. In risking everything to tell this story, she became one of the leading press freedom figures of our generation."
Simon noted, "Her death is a great loss to journalism, to her country, and to the service of truth. Russia is one of the most murderous places in the world for journalists, and it has a long history of impunity in these killings. This is the time for Russian authorities to reverse this years-long assault on independent journalism by bringing Anna Politkovskaya's killers to justice."
Russia is the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists over the past 15 years, trailing only the conflict-ridden countries of Iraq and Algeria. A new CPJ report found that 42 journalists had been killed in Russia since 1992. Many were slain in contract-style executions, and the vast majority remain unsolved by Russian authorities. The report is available at http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2006/deadly_news/deadly_news.html.
The contract-style killing of American journalist Paul Klebnikov is among the many cases that are unsolved. Two men were tried this year and acquitted. Klebnikov, editor of Forbes Russia, was gunned down on a Moscow street in July 2004.
