Nina Ognianova: "We call on Russian authorities in Tyumen to immediately release Aleksei Kungurov and drop all charges against him"

posted 23 Dec 2016, 01:31 by Rights in Russia   [ updated 23 Dec 2016, 01:33 ]
"We call on Russian authorities in Tyumen to immediately release Aleksei Kungurov and drop all charges against him. Since the Kremlin's control over traditional media is nearly absolute, blogs have become an important platform in Russia for independent reporting, analysis, commentary, debate, and information-sharing. Now authorities are contracting that space as well."

- Nina Ognianova, CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator

On 20 December 2016, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement calling on Russian authorities to release Aleksei Kungurov, a blogger from Siberia who was convicted of "calling for terrorism." That day a regional court in Tyumen sentenced Kungurov to two years in a prison colony over a blog post that criticized Russia's actions in Syria, according to news reports and information posted to his LiveJournal blog.


Source:
'Russia jails blogger over post criticizing military action in Syria,' Committee to Protect Journalists, 20 December 2016
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