{"id":16656,"date":"2021-02-01T17:02:23","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T17:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=157117"},"modified":"2021-02-01T17:02:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T17:02:23","slug":"russian-authorities-put-a-target-on-journalists-as-opposition-protests-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/01\/russian-authorities-put-a-target-on-journalists-as-opposition-protests-continue\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Authorities Put A Target On Journalists As Opposition Protests Continue"},"content":{"rendered":"
On the eve of a second wave of national mass protests in support of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, Russian police detained Sergei Smirnov, editor in chief of the independent news outlet Mediazona, outside his Moscow home as he left to take a walk with his small son.<\/p>\n
In a widely shared video, the boy can be seen watching stoically, even smiling, as Smirnov asks the arresting officer in plainclothes to put on a mask against the coronavirus and telephones his wife to come and take care of the child.<\/p>\n
By the time the January 31 protests were over, at least 82 journalists had been detained in cities across the country, according to the Open Media<\/a><\/strong> website, which is funded by exiled opposition businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, citing the nonstate Union of Journalists and Media Workers.<\/p>\n The union said 21 of the journalists were detained in Moscow and 10 in St. Petersburg. In all, the union documented 104 violations<\/a><\/strong> of the rights of journalists in connection with the January 31 protest, including 16 cases in which police visited journalists ahead of the demonstration to “warn” them against covering the event.<\/p>\n “The arrest and detention of Smirnov and dozens of other journalists is an attempt to intimidate and silence Russia’s independent media during a moment of national upheaval,” Polina Sadovskaya, Eurasia program director of PEN America, said in a statement<\/a><\/strong> condemning the detentions by the government of President Vladimir Putin. “In attempting to intimidate and silence the press, Putin’s government exposes its own fear of those who report the truth.”<\/p>\n The detentions came in the wake of a similar sweep during the first wave of protests on January 23, during which the Union of Journalists and Media Workers and the Russian Union of Journalists documented<\/a><\/strong> 52 violations of the rights of journalists in 17 different cities. Sixteen journalists were reported detained in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n