New York, November 28, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by death threats against two colleagues of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
The independent Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta said in a statement yesterday that two of its leading journalists received anonymous death threats on November 24.
Deputy Editor Sergei Sokolov told the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy that publicizing the threats was the best way to protect journalists. But the semiweekly, citing concerns about the safety of its journalists, did not name those threatened or comment further.
“It is outrageous that the staff of Novaya Gazeta should receive death threats on the heels of the brutal murder of their coworker Anna Politkovskaya,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. “We call on the Russian authorities to protect our threatened colleagues, and bring to justice those responsible for issuing these threats which are yet another attempt to muzzle the independent press in Russia.”
Novaya Gazeta said that one journalist was threatened in connection with an article about the North Caucasus, and the other in relation to the paper’s investigation of Politkovskaya’s murder.
Politkovskaya, a critic of President Vladimir Putin who reported tirelessly on human rights abuses in Chechnya, was slain in her Moscow apartment building on October 7 by a lone gunman who used a silencer. For further information, see: http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/europe/russia10oct06na.html