July 10, 2020 7:56AM EDT
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Russia: Dozens of Journalists Detained for Peaceful Protests
Detentions Put Them at Added Health Risk
(Moscow) – Dozens of journalists in
Russia face fines or detention for peacefully protesting in solidarity with their colleagues whom authorities are criminally prosecuting for their journalism work, Human Rights Watch said today. Russian authorities should immediately drop the charges against the protesters and other journalists and end attacks on freedom of expression.
In most cases, police invoked rules on public assemblies as grounds for arrest. In several cases, police also invoked public health rules, introduced to prevent the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19. The police falsely claimed that some of the protesters were violating these rules, yet kept most of the detained protesters in overcrowded, poorly ventilated police vehicles where they could not practice social distancing.
“Independent reporters in Russia have been under attack for years, with the recent criminal prosecutions taking the repression to a new level,” said
Damelya Aitkhozhina, Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “People have every reason to peacefully protest repression, and the authorities have an obligation to allow them to do so safely. Instead they’ve detained peaceful protesters under the abusive and restrictive rules on public assembly and under the guise of protecting public health, while exposing them to risk of infection in custody.”..
