March 2, 2009 By Grigory Pasko

Grigory Pasko: Violence against Journalists Worsening in Russia

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He tripped and fell on my knife. Eight times…

Grigory Pasko, journalist

A few weeks ago…  The editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Solnechnogorsky forum”, 72-year-old Yuri Grachev, about whom it had recently been reported that he had been beaten up in the entryway of his own house, regained consciousness and gave the first explanations to the police. In his words, he had driven up to the house in an automobile, he was walking into the entryway and what happened next – he doesn’t remember. In the law-enforcement organs, they do not rule out that Grachev could have lost his footing and fallen, as the result of which he received the traumas the presence of which doctors had ascertained.

The day before…  In the MVD of Russia they have named the reason for which Russian journalists are murdered most often. The percentage of crimes associated with professional activity is not great, they assert at the agency. In the words of the chief of the administration of public relations of the MVD RF, Valery Gribakin, whom ITAR-TASS cites, in the main employees of the mass information media are murdered during the course of conflicts that arise on ordinary everyday soil. The number of cases when journalists are lynched for their publications and investigations, in percentage ratio is not great”.