In the Media

Russian journalist slain

Gar

By Gar Swaffar

Dec 17, 2011 -

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Makhachkala - A Russian editor and journalist has lost his life in the pursuit of working in his profession in a southern region of Russia.

Gadzhimurat Kamalov was the founder of the Russian newspaper Chernovik and he was found shot to death in Makhachkala, Russia yesterday. The city of Makhachkala is in Dagestan, a province which has seemingly been plagued by corruption in the government, and it may have the reporting of the corruption which prompted the killing.

After being shot eight times, Kamalov was pronounced dead while making the trip to the hospital. The killing is being reported at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) website as the twentieth murder of journalists in Russia since since 2000. The Dagestan region is one of the most hazardous areas to practice the profession of journalism in Russia, with twenty percent of the Russian deaths having occurred there.

The province of Dagestan is reported by Reuters to be predominantly Muslim and is in the midst of a low activity Muslim insurgency which is focused on bringing sharia law to the province. While the Russians ostensibly have control of the region, the area being 90.6% Muslim and only 9.4% Christian, the conflict shows no signs of easing soon. The Russian Federation has been accused of treating the crimes against journalists by local government as a very low priority for solving.

Kamalov had been placed on a Death List in 2009 along with eight more journalists from the North Caucasus region which includes Dagestan. The list was published in leaflets which were distributed in the area and the publisher of the list was never identified.

Five other journalists from the weekly newspaper Chernovik had been targeted and prosecuted in what were alleged to have been spurious charges of extremism. The charges stemmed from reporting in 2008, on apparent corruption within the law enforcement communities of the region. All five journalists were eventually found innocent of the charges in May of this year.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/316241#ixzz1gq8OiDvY