 Source: HRO.org The statement is the first joint action of the association with the working name “Free Speech”, whose purpose will be to defend free speech in Russia. Open Letter We, as members of the “Free Speech Association” – writers, journalists, public figures in the arts, academics – are extremely disturbed by threats aimed at our colleagues, journalists working at “Novaya Gazeta”, who have published on their pages material on mass arrests, torture and extra-judicial killings carried out against people living in Chechnya. We believe that the threatening and aggressive reaction to the journalists’ work that was seen on 3rd April at a rally of many thousands at the Central Mosque in Grozny, is unacceptable in a civilised society and should be evaluated from the point of view of Russian law. The absence of a proper reaction on the part of the law enforcement agencies and the country’s authorities triggered the usual threats – this time against the journalists from “Echo of Moscow” who spoke out in support of their colleagues at “Novaya Gazeta”. We remember too well how threats of this kind end. The uninvestigated murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova, the failure of investigators and the court to conduct a rigorous trial in the case of the murder of Boris Nemtsov compel us to follow the development of this situation with special trepidation. We demand that law enforcement agencies and the Prosecutor-General of the Russian Federation deliver a full legal evaluation of actions intended to incite hatred and enmity towards journalists carrying out their professional duties, and to decisively put a stop to regularly recurring recent attempts to substitute the legal foundations of the Russian Constitution with some sort of vestiges of customary law or religious dogmas. Svetlana Aleksievich, writer Alexander Arkhangelsky, writer Dmitry Bavilsky, writer Elena Baevskaya, translator, teacher Irina Balakhonova, Publisher Nune Barseghyan, writer, psychologist Leonid Bakhnov, writer Irina Bogatyreva, writer Tatyana Bonch-Osmolovskaya, writer Marina Boroditskaya, poet, translator, children's writer Alla Bossart, writer Olga Varshaver, translator Dmitry Vedenyapin, the poet Marina Vishnevetskaya, writer, screenwriter Vladimir Voinovich, writer Sergey Gandlevsky, writer Alisa Ganieva, writer Alexander Gelman, playwright Kristina Gorelik, journalist Varvara Gornostayeva, publisher Mark Greenberg, translator Natalia Demina, journalist Vitaliy Dixon, writer Olga Drobot, translator Eugene Ermolin, critic, cultural historian Victor Yesipov, poet, literary critic George Efremov, poet, translator Natalia Ivanova, writer, critic Alexander Illichevsky, writer Igor Irtenev, writer Gennady Kalashnikov, the poet Pavel Kataev, writer, Irina Kravtsova, Publisher Gennady Krasukhin, literary critic, writer Maya Kucherskaya, writer Alexander Livergant, translator Natalia Mavlevich, translator Alexey Motrov, writer Vladimir Moshchenko, writer Anton Nechaev, writer Leonid Nikitinsky, journalist Sergey Parkhomenko, journalist Grigory Pasko, journalist Nikolay Podosokorsky, philologist, literary critic Alexander Podrabinek, journalist Alyosha Prokopiev, poet, translator Maria Rybakova, writer Zoya Svetova, journalist Olga Sedakova, writer Alexey Slapovsky, writer Vladimir Sorokin, writer Vladimir Sotnikov, writer Tatyana Sotnikova (Anna Berseneva), writer Irina Staf, philologist, translator Lyubov Somm, translator Lev Timofeev, writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, writer Elena Fanailova, poet, journalist Igor Kharichev, writer Alexey Tsvetkov, writer, essayist Grigory Chkhartishvili (Boris Akunin), writer Alla Shevelkina, journalist Tatiana Shcherbina, poet, essayist Sergey Yakovlev, writer Alexander Yarin, translator Translated by Frances Robson |
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