Colleagues urge investigation into Russian journalist's death
Friends and colleagues called today for an investigation into the death of a Russian TV journalist who plunged from the 14th storey of a city centre building a day after winning a major legal case.
Olga Kotovskaya, a prominent journalist in the western enclave of Kaliningrad, died on 16 November. Officials initially claimed her death was suicide, but last week opened a criminal investigation into claims that she had been murdered. The case has attracted little attention from Russia's predominantly Kremlin-controlled media, and news of the suspicious death did not reach international human rights groups until earlier this week.
Kotovskaya fell from a window a day after winning a long-running court battle to regain control of her successful Kaskad regional TV channel. Founded in the early 90s, the channel had a reputation for objective news reporting, live broadcasts, and studio guests who were sometimes critical of regional leaders.
In 2004, a group of local bureaucrats, led by Kaliningrad's former deputy governor Vladimir Pirogov, seized control of the channel, which immediately stopped criticising the enclave's administration.
A day before Kotovskaya's death, a court ruled that her signature on a document giving her company to its new owners had been forged.
"I have no doubt at all that this was a political killing," Solomon Ginzburg, a deputy in Kaliningrad's regional parliament, said. "It was murder. Olga was a strong, feisty woman. A year before her death, she came to me and said that a high-ranking official had urged her to drop her legal case."
Ginzburg said Kotovskaya was not an opposition activist but was opposed to censorship. "I know a lot of journalists at Kaskad. They are pretty honest about what goes on. They talk openly about the fact they now have to paint the regional administration in rosy colours. The situation is worse than in the final years of the Soviet Union."
The Kaliningrad branch of Russia's Union of Journalists ridiculed the theory that Kotovskaya killed herself. It urged law enforcement agencies to investigate, adding that the 50-year-old journalist – who had two grown-up children – had no reason to kill herself. Kotovskaya had built up a thriving business, including two independent TV stations, a daily newspaper, two radio stations and a PR agency. Her husband, Igor Rostov, who formerly co-owned her company, has hired a private detective to try to identify her killers.
"She was murdered," he told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper. "If I am found dead on the rails, do not believe that I committed suicide."
Local opposition activists agree. "I do not have the slightest doubt that she was murdered," Mikhail Chesalin, leader of the local division of Patriots of Russia party, told the paper. "The fact that violence against journalists and owners of media outlets has become the norm in the Kaliningrad region and is almost never punished should at least attract the attention of the authorities."
According to the New York-based Committee to Project Journalists, Russia is the third most dangerous place in the world to be a reporter, after Iraq and Algeria. Since 2000, 17 journalists have been murdered because of their work or have died under suspicious circumstances. The killers have been convicted in only one instance. In every case the masterminds remain unpunished.
So far, nobody has been held responsible for the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist and Kremlin critic who was shot dead outside her Moscow flat in October 2006.
Four colleagues from her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, have been murdered, including Anastasia Baburova, a journalist who was shot dead in January, together with the paper's lawyer, Stanislav Markelov.
According to Mikhail Melnikov, of Moscow's Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations, 40 to 50 attacks on journalists take place in Russia every year.
"The picture differs," he said. "Some Russian regions are all right, but in others it's the middle ages."
Marianna Andryushina, the press secretary for the Investigations Committee of the prosecutor's office in Kaliningrad region, said investigators were considering several theories in connection with Kotovskaya's death. "This includes the possibility that she was forced to commit suicide," she said.
Killed in the line of duty
Anna Politkovskaya The special correspondent of Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Politkovskaya was shot dead in the lift of her Moscow flat on 7 October 2006. Her killer has not been caught. She was a bitter critic of the Kremlin, and its proxies in Chechnya.
Anastasia Baburova A freelance working for Novaya Gazeta, Baburova was shot dead on 19 January on a Moscow street, along with the paper's lawyer, Stanislav Markelov. She was 25. Two neo-Nazis have been arrested.
Magomed Yevloyev A journalist and owner of the opposition news website Ingushetia.ru, Yevloyev was shot dead by police. He was highly critical of Murat Zyazikov, Ingushetia's former Kremlin-appointed president.
Yuri Shchekochikhin Novaya Gazeta's deputy editor died of poisoning in July 2003. He had been investigating claims that Russia's FSB spy agency carried out Moscow's 1999 apartment block bombings to justify Vladimir Putin's subsequent war in Chechnya.
Igor Dominkov The senior Novaya Gazeta reporter was bludgeoned to death outside his Moscow apartment in July 2000.
Olga Kotovskaya, a prominent journalist in the western enclave of Kaliningrad, died on 16 November. Officials initially claimed her death was suicide, but last week opened a criminal investigation into claims that she had been murdered. The case has attracted little attention from Russia's predominantly Kremlin-controlled media, and news of the suspicious death did not reach international human rights groups until earlier this week.
Kotovskaya fell from a window a day after winning a long-running court battle to regain control of her successful Kaskad regional TV channel. Founded in the early 90s, the channel had a reputation for objective news reporting, live broadcasts, and studio guests who were sometimes critical of regional leaders.
In 2004, a group of local bureaucrats, led by Kaliningrad's former deputy governor Vladimir Pirogov, seized control of the channel, which immediately stopped criticising the enclave's administration.
A day before Kotovskaya's death, a court ruled that her signature on a document giving her company to its new owners had been forged.
"I have no doubt at all that this was a political killing," Solomon Ginzburg, a deputy in Kaliningrad's regional parliament, said. "It was murder. Olga was a strong, feisty woman. A year before her death, she came to me and said that a high-ranking official had urged her to drop her legal case."
Ginzburg said Kotovskaya was not an opposition activist but was opposed to censorship. "I know a lot of journalists at Kaskad. They are pretty honest about what goes on. They talk openly about the fact they now have to paint the regional administration in rosy colours. The situation is worse than in the final years of the Soviet Union."
The Kaliningrad branch of Russia's Union of Journalists ridiculed the theory that Kotovskaya killed herself. It urged law enforcement agencies to investigate, adding that the 50-year-old journalist – who had two grown-up children – had no reason to kill herself. Kotovskaya had built up a thriving business, including two independent TV stations, a daily newspaper, two radio stations and a PR agency. Her husband, Igor Rostov, who formerly co-owned her company, has hired a private detective to try to identify her killers.
"She was murdered," he told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper. "If I am found dead on the rails, do not believe that I committed suicide."
Local opposition activists agree. "I do not have the slightest doubt that she was murdered," Mikhail Chesalin, leader of the local division of Patriots of Russia party, told the paper. "The fact that violence against journalists and owners of media outlets has become the norm in the Kaliningrad region and is almost never punished should at least attract the attention of the authorities."
According to the New York-based Committee to Project Journalists, Russia is the third most dangerous place in the world to be a reporter, after Iraq and Algeria. Since 2000, 17 journalists have been murdered because of their work or have died under suspicious circumstances. The killers have been convicted in only one instance. In every case the masterminds remain unpunished.
So far, nobody has been held responsible for the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist and Kremlin critic who was shot dead outside her Moscow flat in October 2006.
Four colleagues from her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, have been murdered, including Anastasia Baburova, a journalist who was shot dead in January, together with the paper's lawyer, Stanislav Markelov.
According to Mikhail Melnikov, of Moscow's Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations, 40 to 50 attacks on journalists take place in Russia every year.
"The picture differs," he said. "Some Russian regions are all right, but in others it's the middle ages."
Marianna Andryushina, the press secretary for the Investigations Committee of the prosecutor's office in Kaliningrad region, said investigators were considering several theories in connection with Kotovskaya's death. "This includes the possibility that she was forced to commit suicide," she said.
Killed in the line of duty
Anna Politkovskaya The special correspondent of Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Politkovskaya was shot dead in the lift of her Moscow flat on 7 October 2006. Her killer has not been caught. She was a bitter critic of the Kremlin, and its proxies in Chechnya.
Anastasia Baburova A freelance working for Novaya Gazeta, Baburova was shot dead on 19 January on a Moscow street, along with the paper's lawyer, Stanislav Markelov. She was 25. Two neo-Nazis have been arrested.
Magomed Yevloyev A journalist and owner of the opposition news website Ingushetia.ru, Yevloyev was shot dead by police. He was highly critical of Murat Zyazikov, Ingushetia's former Kremlin-appointed president.
Yuri Shchekochikhin Novaya Gazeta's deputy editor died of poisoning in July 2003. He had been investigating claims that Russia's FSB spy agency carried out Moscow's 1999 apartment block bombings to justify Vladimir Putin's subsequent war in Chechnya.
Igor Dominkov The senior Novaya Gazeta reporter was bludgeoned to death outside his Moscow apartment in July 2000.
(Нет голосов) |