Russia: Irina Slavina deserves justice. We are devastated at her death caused due to state oppression.

October 3, 2020 -- The Coalition For Women In Journalism (CFWIJ) is devastated at the death of Russian journalist Irina Slavina, who passed away after setting herself on fire to protest an unjustified raid at her apartment a day earlier. We extend our condolences and thoughts to Irina’s loved ones in this time of grief.

Irina Slavina, the editor-in-chief of Koza Press - a small local news outlet based in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, passed away after she self-immolated in front of the interior ministry's local office on October 2. She took this fatal step to protest a raid at her home a day earlier by police and investigators. Irina blamed the Russian Federation for her death in a Facebook post after the raid was carried out.

“I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death,” she wrote in the post on October 1, a day before she committed suicide. Irina was spearheading the Koza Press, which was known for having “no censorship, no orders ‘from above”. She was practicing independent journalism and upholding the values of press freedom amidst a system that led her to take her own life.

According to the Facebook post, police officers and investigators searched Irina’s home looking for “brochures, leaflets and accounts” that they believed could be from the pro-democracy opposition group Open Russia. The political organization is financed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky - a businessman and vocal Kremlin critic. Irina further wrote that during the raid her notebooks, laptop and other electronic equipment was also seized by authorities. They also took away her husband’s mobile phone and her daughter’s laptop.

While a statement by Russia’s Investigative Committee suggested that a preliminary inquiry has been initiated following a self-immolation incident in Nizhny Novgorod, they did not specifically mention Irina’s name in it. A local branch of the committee stated that the incident has nothing to do with the raid at Irina’s home.

This news has broken our hearts, but we are also enraged to have lost a fearless journalist to state oppression in a country where practicing free speech is becoming increasingly difficult each day. Irina deserves justice and her perpetrators must be tried in the court of law.