March 28
Viktor Nikulin, ORT Television, KILLED
Nikulin, a correspondent for Russian state television (ORT), was shot and killed in his office in Dushanbe at 4:20 p.m. News accounts reported that he was shot twice when he answered knocks at his office door. A week before he was killed, he had received three threatening telephone calls. A colleague reported that, as a result, Nikulin put a heavy lock on his door. The Tajik government stated that his killing was a "terrorist act" by opposition forces. CPJ wrote to Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov and urged him to order a thorough investigation of Nikulin's murder and to ensure the safety of foreign correspondents in Tajikistan. In a letter to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, CPJ urged him to demand a full accounting from Tajik authorities of Nikulin's murder and to ask for assurances that the safety of foreign correspondents in Tajikistan be guaranteed. On April 7, Moskovskiye Novosti reported that Gennady Blinov, first deputy interior minister of Tajikistan, announced that approximately 100 people had been detained in connection with the Nikulin case and that he was examining Nikulin's articles to determine possible motives for his murder. CPJ received no response from the Tajik government to its letters about Nikulin's death and the unsolved murders of other journalists. In May, a CPJ representative met with R. Grant Smith, the U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan, to express concerns about lack of follow-up on this and other cases of journalists' murders and unsafe working conditions for reporters. On Aug. 24, the Tajik president's press secretary hinted in an interview with the Russian radio station Mayak that "certain progress" was being made in the Nikulin murder investigation and would soon be publicized, but at year's end, no announcement had been made.

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