Torture is alive and well in today’s Russia, Russian Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov said on Friday. He believes journalists are the antidote to tyranny.
“The practice of torture in prisons and under investigation is alive and well in modern Russia,” Muratov said in his Nobel address at Oslo City Hall on Friday.
- PHOTO: Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
He also listed atrocities such as abuse, rape, and horrific living conditions.
Muratov, who is the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, is in Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize together with the Philippine journalist Maria Ressa.
“Barbarism”
In the lecture, Muratov took a hard line against President Vladimir Putin’s regime, comparing it to Stalin’s repression of the Russian people.
Among other things, criminal cases based on false accusations are often used in political cases, Muratov said, referring to the accusations against opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
“We hear more and more often about the torture of prisoners and detainees. People are being tortured to break down, to make the punishment even more brutal. This is barbarism,” Muratov warned.
Journalism in Russia is also going through dark times, he added.
“Over a hundred journalists, media, human rights defenders, and NGOs have in recent months been given the status of “foreign agents.” In Russia, this is the same as being the enemy of the people, he said.
Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews
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Too bad that journalist Julian Assange … who should have been one of this Peace Prize recipients … wasn’t there to compare notes with Muratov.
Then too journalist Jamal Khashoggi should have been recognized … but he is dead.
Any country under attack … from the West again, as in Russia’s case … often does deal harshly with those who ally themselves with its attackers.
Back in the Alaska State/Historical Library in May 1975 I met Nobel Prize for Literature – A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. My Russian was as bad as his English, so we communicated in German, ironically.
Solzhenitsyn later spoke out strongly against the West – NATO – breaking the Atlantic Charter, wrongfully – Appendix B of the Rambouillet Treaty – with our 1999 Kosovo bombing war, and I doubt he would have any patience with Muratov.
But in any case the Peace Committee should at least question Julian Assange’s wrongful imprisonment and try to protect him … instead of turning its back on him.