wri-info

October was not a good month for Russian human rights activists. On 7 October, Anna Politkovskaya, a well know journalist who regularly exposed Russian human rights violations in Chechnya, was murdered in her flat in Moscow. Six days later, on 13 October, the Russian Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS) of Nizhnii Novgorod was ordered closed by a local court, because the recently adopted NGO law makes it illegal for an organisation to be headed by a person convicted of "extremist activities".

On 7 October 2006, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered outside her flat in Moscow. This was not an isolated case -- several journalists have been killed in Russia in recent years -- and it was not a coincidence that Anna Politkovskaya was the target.