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Memory of Irina Slavina in the center of Nizhny Novgorod
Photo: Mikhail Solunin / ITAR-TASS / imago images
At least they leave the flowers behind now.
Time and again, people had placed small bouquets on the bank in front of the fence of the regional representation of the Ministry of the Interior in Nizhny Novgorod, had set up candles, and they were repeatedly put away.
It is the bench on which Irina Slawina, journalist, 47 years old, sat down a few days ago, lit her coat and set herself on fire with it.
A surveillance camera recorded the suicide, the images are horrific.
"I ask that the Russian Federation be blamed for my death."
Slawina had previously left this message on Facebook.
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Farewell to Irina Slawina in Nizhny Novgorod
Photo: Mikhail Solunin / ITAR-TASS / imago images
Irina Slawina was buried on Tuesday.
Hundreds of people had previously said goodbye, placed flowers in front of their coffins, even Governor Gleb Nikitin came.
People applauded when the coffin was removed and the crowd moved to the bank in front of the interior ministry of the metropolis.
"The air around me is getting scarcer, soon everything will collapse and I will no longer be able to physically. You are crushing me."
Irina Slavina
The suicide of Slavina not only shakes the people in Nizhny Novgorod, 400 kilometers east of Moscow.
Her story tells a lot about the situation of independent journalists in Russia, especially far away from the capital Moscow, who believe in their work despite the repression and continue to do it day after day.
"The air around me is getting scarcer, soon everything will collapse and I will no longer be able to physically. You are crushing me," Irina Slawina told SPIEGEL in November 2019.
In the past few years she has seen the state increasingly curtail the freedom of the press and freedom of expression, and how the pressure on her has increased because she wanted to do her job as a journalist.
She wanted to try to hold out until her Internet portal "Kozapress" was five years old, she said at the time.
"I wonder, will I and my project survive until then? To be honest, there is no hope."
Publisher, editor-in-chief, reporter rolled into one
But Slavina somehow made it, in the spring she celebrated her anniversary and went on tirelessly.
She was stubborn, she said of herself. "My father, a captain, once said that God gave me the stubbornness of five people."
She had lost her job three times because she refused to accept the censorship.
Then she founded her own medium "Kozapress", she was publisher, editor-in-chief and reporter rolled into one.
Lived on donations, advertising income and the support of her family.
The journalist wrote about corrupt officials and MPs as well as the persecution of opposition members, committed and emotional.
She dared to report on what must not have a place in the state media.
She wrote - if she still had the time.
"I spend more time in courts than with my work," she complained a year ago.
Fines and house searches
Slavina was fined 70,000 rubles, around 990 euros, for a post on Facebook about a Stalin plaque, which the court classified as a "disrespectful" statement against the Russian state and society according to a new law that has just come into force would have.
The average monthly income is around 440 euros.
It wasn't the only fine she received:
She had to pay around 20,000 rubles fine, just under 220 euros, because of a memorial march for the shot opposition activist Boris Nemtsov.
Most recently, she reported about a martial arts trainer who met people despite being infected with the corona.
She was supposed to pay 65,000 rubles, about 700 euros, because of the allegedly "knowingly incorrect" contribution. The authorities had confirmed the case and Slavina appealed once more.
On Thursday last week, Slawina received a visit from the security forces: at six in the morning, twelve officers began to ransack her family's apartment.
The reason: a case against "Open Russia", the organization of the Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which was classified as "undesirable" in 2017.
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Irina Slawina has been harassed by the Russian state for years
Photo: AP
Irina Slawina, mind you, was officially only a witness in this investigation.
The officials wrote on Facebook that the officials did not find any material or brochures from "Open Russia".
Nevertheless, they took USB sticks, phones, computers, notepads and laptops from her and her daughter.
A day later, Slawina killed herself.
Her daughter then took to the street with a poster: "While my mom was burning alive, you were silent."
"War of attrition against journalists"
The regional investigation committee does not want to see any connection between the search of the journalist's home and her suicide.
Friends, activists and members of the opposition see it differently, speak of the drop that broke the barrel, drove Slavina to the terrible act that they see as an act of protest.
Why did she kill herself, especially in this terrible way, ask others.
A journalists' union, colleagues, members of the opposition and the organization Reporters Without Borders are calling for an independent investigation into the circumstances.
The Kremlin-critical newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" calls Slavina's death "the most tragic result of the merciless pressure of the leadership on regional journalists".
House searches of the opposition have become the norm, news about it has become uninteresting, how could it be that one considers terror to be normal, asks Kirill Martynov in the newspaper.
Human rights activist Tanja Lokschina from Human Rights Watch speaks on Facebook of a "war of attrition against journalists" in Russia who are exposed to harassment and persecution.
Above all, it is the small regional media that have hardly any staff and little financial support.
Two examples:
The authorities have already tried ten times
to shut down
the
independent media "Nowye Koljosa"
in Kaliningrad
, which appeared as a newspaper for a long time and is known for its critical and biting texts.
The editor is currently abroad and new proceedings are threatened.
But the journalists continue, most recently on Friday the editorial office and apartment of journalist
Alexei Malinovsky were
searched for hours.
The reason: an article about corruption by senior officials in a department of the local interior ministry.
The authorities say that it contains "deliberately false information," but the editorial team rejects it.
"We think they wanted to find our sources and more information," says Malinovsky, who is officially only a witness in the trial.
Mikhail Afanasyev
, an independent journalist from Abakan, the capital of the Republic of Khakassia
in southern Siberia
, holds a sad record: 73 charges and criminal proceedings for spreading lies have already been brought against him in his career.
Most recently, the 44-year-old was convicted for allegedly calling a regional minister on
his "Novyj Fokus" portal
offended.
Afanasyev says the laws are being misused to take action against journalists.
He speaks of a "state machine that exerts pressure with so much hatred and contempt".
We can destroy you, be the message.
How can he take it?
"I don't want to lose, I don't want to let them win, I don't give up."
He receives support from sponsors and readers, but the situation is getting more and more difficult.
This is what his Kaliningrad colleague Malinovsky says: soon, he fears, that independent Russian media will only be able to work from abroad.
Both are shaken by the death of their colleague and also believe that she was driven into suicide.
Slavina's Internet portal "Kozapress" is to be continued in Nizhny Novgorod.
How exactly, that will be decided in the coming weeks, announced her husband.
Icon: The mirror
Collaboration: Tatiana Sutkovaja