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MURDERED 16 NOVEMBER 2009
Olga Kotovskaya, Co-Founder, Kaskad — Kaliningrad, Russia
Join us in demanding justice for Olga Kotovskaya. Authorities called it a suicide but her friends and colleagues of believe she was murdered in connection to her work: on 16 November 2009, Kotovskaya fell to her death from a 14th-floor window of a building that she reportedly had no reason to be in. For years, Kotovskaya had been embroiled in a lawsuit with Kaliningrad’s former vice governor, Vladimir Pirogov, over control of Kaskad. A week before her death, a local court upheld her claims that Pirogov had taken charge of the station using documentation containing forged signatures.
International Day to End Impunity is on 23 November. Until that date, we will reveal a story each day of a journalist, writer or free expression advocate who was killed in the line of duty.
Friends and colleagues have called for an investigation into the death of a Russian TV journalist, Olga Kotovskaya who plunged from the 14th storey of a building one day after winning a major legal case. She was a prominent journalist on Kaskad regional TV channel which broadcasts in the western enclave of Kaliningrad. The channel had a reputation for objective news reporting, live broadcasts, and studio guests who were sometimes critical of regional leaders. The death was originally considered to be suicide however Solomon Ginzburg a deputy in Kaliningrad’s regional parliament told the Guardian: “I have no doubt at all that this was a political killing.” Read more here