[LINK] "Chechen Media Outlet Issues Death Threats against Russian Journalist"

[rfmcdonald]

Nora Happel of the Inter Press Service reports on the Chechen government's issuing of threats against Russian journalists who provide critical coverage.

Press freedom groups are condemning veiled death threats against Novaya Gazeta correspondent Elena Milashina by a Chechen online news portal last month.

In a May 19 editorial entitled “The United States Uses Pawns”, Mavsar Varayev, deputy editor of the state-sponsored Chechen media outlet Grozny Inform, warned Milashina that she is likely to become “the next victim” in a series of murders, supposedly orchestrated by U.S. and Israeli intelligence in a bid to “destabilise” Russia.

He explicitly said she could meet the same fate as Anna Politkovskaya, the Novaya Gazeta journalist murdered in 2006, and Boris Nemtsov, the Russian political opposition leader murdered in March 2015.

As reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Milashina considers the article an “order for [her] murder”.

[. . .]

The independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta also perceives the Chechen editorial as a “direct death threat” against an employee and has called upon Russian authorities to investigate the issue.