The Kremlin has blacklisted 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitri Muratov on its blacklist of foreign agents. The journalist and director of the historic newspaper Novaya Gazeta, closed this year by the justice of Vladimir Putin, has been accused of “using foreign platforms to disseminate opinions that generate a negative attitude towards Russia’s domestic and foreign policy.” His name thus joins that of hundreds of Russian citizens on whom he threatens a sentence in case of breaching the draconian obligations of the foreign agents law.
Director of Novaya Gazeta He has not yet publicly ruled on his appointment by the Kremlin. Yes, other persecuted have done it. The Telegram account of political dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, sentenced to 25 years in prison for high treason for participating in foreign forums, recalled that Muratov said in his Nobel Prize speech that journalism is “an antidote to tyranny”.
In addition to the director, several journalists from independent media such as Dozhd and echo of moscowand various dissidents and anti-war activists.
The label of foreign agents shares the name with the same legislation used by other countries such as the United States. If in those States it only obliges to show in more detail the income received from abroad, in Russia it vetoes the outlaws to hold public office or attend politics, as well as receive any public aid.
The law received another twist in December of last year. The designation as a foreign agent no longer applies only to those who have received foreign financing, but to any citizen that the authorities consider susceptible “to be under foreign influence.” Thus, not aligning with the postulates of the Kremlin can be a reason for being banned.
This legislation makes the life of those labeled on this blacklist difficult to the limit of the impossible. The rule also calls for “unscheduled inspections” of people who interact with foreign agents. In fact, the Ministry of Justice has another list of people who were “affiliated” with organizations declared foreign agents. One of them, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize Memorial, founded in the last years of the USSR to expose Soviet crimes, was liquidated for failing to put in all its Instagram posts that it had been designated a foreign agent.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe
Memorial was made possible by the opening of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The last president of the Soviet Union also supported the founding of Novaya Gazeta with the money he received from his own Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
Despite the fact that the newspaper had suspended its activity at the start of the war to try to avoid its end, the Kremlin closed it in September last year for having quoted two foreign agents in two pieces without mentioning them. It was impossible: at the time of publication, one NGO did not yet have that label, and the other had been removed from the list.
Some journalists from Novaya Gazeta they left the country and founded another newspaper abroad without any relation to the historical newspaper or Muratov, Novaya Gazeta Europa. The Russian authorities declared it an “undesirable organization” in June this year. That is, the same status as an extremist or terrorist organization and criminally punishable by jail for having any type of contact with the media.
The decision against Muratov coincides with the commotion caused by the Nobel Foundation by announcing on Thursday that it was again inviting the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus to the gala of the awards given in Stockholm, after vetoing them last year. Two days after the announcement and given the criticism received from inside and outside Sweden, the organizing committee has decided to rectify and maintain the veto on the legations of these two countries, to which Iran is added.
This controversy would not affect the Peace Prize that Muratov received two years ago, which is awarded and delivered in Oslo (Norway) and whose ceremony can still be attended by emissaries from these countries. In 2022, the Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, today locked up in prison by the Alexandr Lukashenko regime, and the Russian organization that defends historical memory and human rights, Liquidated by the Kremlin with extreme application of the law, received the distinction. of foreign agents just before unleashing their war.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
#Russia #includes #Nobel #Prize #winner #Dmitri #Muratov #list #foreign #agents