Violence Against Russian Journalists: Seek Obama's Help

According to our research, at least 20 journalists have been killed in connection with their work since Vladimir Putin became president in March 2000.

...Harassment and attacks on journalists have increased since mid-2008. Three cases in particular have shocked us. Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of the Ingushetia.org website, was shot dead in Ingushetia in August 2008 after being illegally arrested. Mikhail Beketov, the editor of a local newspaper near Moscow, had to have a leg and several fingers amputated after being badly beaten in November. Anastasia Baburova, a young Novaya Gazeta reporter, was fatally shot in the head in downtown Moscow in January.

...Two of the journalists gunned down in Moscow in the past five years, Paul Khlebnikov in 2004 and Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, had spent much of their time covering Chechnya for Russian and international readers. Neither of these murders has been effectively investigated. The fifth anniversary of the death of Khlebnikov, a US citizen who edited the Russian edition of Forbes, is on 9 July.

Paul Khlebnikov was an American journalist of Russian descent. His murder in Moscow  was seen as a blow against investigative journalism in Russia.

...In the wake of Klebnikov’s murder in 2004, colleagues, friends and family joined together to form the Paul Klebnikov Fund. The Fund’s stated mission is to promote a civil society in Russia by strengthening a free and independent press and by fostering community values through the preservation and protection of neglected but historic buildings.

...The United States Senate has asked Russia to accept help in the investigation of Klebnikov's death, but Russia's Prosecutor General Yury Chaika stated that Russia can cope on its own.

...The issue has been raised in conversations between U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Reporters Without Borders is deeply saddened to learn that newspaper editor Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, who spent several days in a coma after being attacked and beaten outside his home on 29 April, died today in the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don. He was 63.

...Reporters Without Borders said. “The Russian authorities cannot keep covering up crimes of violence against journalists by pretending they were accidents and leaving those responsible at large, completely unpunished.”

   Russia top investigators said on Sunday they had opened a criminal probe into the sinking of a motorboat in the Ob River in northwest Siberia, which has left three journalists missing.

The boat, being used by the Yamal-Region TV and Radio Broadcasting Company, capsized due to strong winds late on Saturday with three crewmembers and six journalists on board, some 20 km (12 miles) from the town of Salekhard.

  Strong winds and heavy rain are holding up the search for three journalists who went missing when their boat capsized in northwest Siberia.