I will give my journalists guns, says boss
RUSSIA: The editor of Russia’s most prominent independent newspaper has offered to arm his journalists because he says the government does not protect them.
Dmitry Muratov’s promise to the newsroom of Novaya Gazeta comes after Tatyana Felgengauer, 32, a presenter at Moscow’s Ekho Moskvy radio station, was stabbed on Monday. She suffered a deep knife wound to her neck and is recovering in hospital.
Muratov said he was being forced into action because of frequent attacks on reporters. ‘‘We have lived through a host of assassination attempts,’’ he said. ‘‘What can I do? I don’t see that the state is protecting us.’’
Muratov said: ‘‘Maybe I’ll regret what I will now say but I already decided to say it before coming on air. I’m going to arm the newsroom.’’
Six journalists at Novaya Gazeta have been killed or died in mysterious circumstance since 2001. Anna Politkovskaya, who reported on human rights abuses in Chechnya, was shot dead in the lift of her apartment block in 2006. Three years later a gunman killed Anastasia Baburova, 25, a freelancer for the paper, in a street in Moscow. Yulia Latynina, 51, a Novaya Gazeta columnist and an Ekho Moskvy host who has reported on Russia’s security services, left the country last month after her car was set on fire.
When a radio host expressed scepticism, Muratov said: ‘‘It’s selfdefence . . . What do you want, for them to go on beating and stabbing [journalists] and knowing that these people are defenceless, unarmed, that the authorities will not stick up for them?’’
Muratov said he would send ‘‘a series of employees’’ for weapons training with Russia’s interior ministry. ‘‘We’re going to place an order for traumatic weapons, take exams,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll also be supplying journalists with other means of security, which I don’t want to talk about.’’ Traumatic weapons in Russia are usually pistols or revolvers that fire pellets or rubber bullets and can be lethal at close range.
Kalashnikov Concern, the weapons maker, announced it would offer a 10 per cent discount to journalists on one of its traumatic pistols, which fires .45 rubber bullets. It said it was willing to hold a seminar on how to use them.
Novaya Gazeta is Russia’s leading liberal newspaper. It is coowned by its staff, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, and Alexander Lebedev, the businessman whose son Evgeny controls the London Evening Standard and The Independent. It is known for its hard-hitting investigative reports.