Two Russian journalists murdered in a single day

It doesn’t take a detective to figure out this is another attack on a free press. Someone is scared of free speech. It is a little early to point this at the government but not to early to remind everyone they have a reputation of silencing critics.

21 March, 2008, DPA
Moscow – The head of the state radio and television in the Russian autonomous Republic of Dagestan was shot dead on Friday in the capital Makhachkala, the Russia state prosecutor Yuri Chaika told the Interfax news agency on Friday. The death of Gaji Abashilova marks the second murder of a journalist in Russia Friday.

Abashilova, who shot on the street in Makhachkala by assailants who fired from a car, according to the Interfax report, which added that Chaika would personally take over the investigation into the murder.

Earlier Friday, Russia state-television journalist Illyas Shurpayev (a native of Dagestan) was found strangled with a belt and stabbed in his burning apartment by firefighters.
-A piss poor attempt to hide a murder.

Three days before his death, the news portal Caucasian Knot reported that Shurpayev had complained of being at the top of a blacklist of journalists who were no longer allowed to publish for a Dagestani newspaper.

Shurpayev was a journalist for state-run Channel One television. Assailants apparently set fire to his apartment early Friday, news agency Interfax quoted prosecutors as saying.

Russian media reports said Shurpayev apparently knew his killers because he called down to the concierge in his building and asked for two young men to be let in.

Prosecutors said they had opened a criminal investigation into the case and were looking at the possibility that the killing might be related to his work.
-Duh!

Shurpayev, 32, had moved to Moscow from Dagestan, a violence- ridden republic neighbouring Chechnya, but he continued to report in the surrounding unsettled regions of the North Caucasus host to corruption and frequent clashes between authorities and separatist rebels.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) on Friday called for Russia to conduct a thorough investigation into the case, saying the journalist appeared to be a target of media repression.
-Ya think?

“We fear that this has all the hallmarks of a targeted attack on a journalist who was reporting from the frontlines of conflict on Russia’s borders,” the IFJ’s head Aidan White said in a statement from Brussels.

Though Shurpayev was not known as an investigative reporter, an entry on his blog hours before his death refers to comments he made about the struggle between journalists and management at a Dagestani newspaper.

“Now I am a dissident,” read the first sentence of the blog on the popular website LiveJournal.
-Ok now lets not target bloggers. I know a few and would like to see them remain healthy.

A dozen journalists have died reporting in Russia since 2000 in contract-style killings allegedly for their attempts to delve into official corruption.

Rights campaigners accuse the Russian state of failing to prosecute these crimes.

They say Russia is experiencing a demise in media freedoms and steadily becoming one of the most dangerous countries for journalists to exercise their profession.
-Something to hide?

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