Reporter Elena Milashina cancels plans to travel to Chechnya, rebukes Russian human rights NGO for revealing her intent to go to Grozny
Elena Milashina, veteran reporter for Russia’s liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, had to cancel her plans to travel to Grozny after they’d been publicized by the human-rights NGO Team Against Torture (also known as Committee Against Torture).
In a column published in Novaya Gazeta, Milashina writes that she no longer plans to attend the appeal hearing on the case of Zarema Musayeva, scheduled to take place at the Chechen Supreme Court on September 12.
Milashina says that she had to cancel her travel plans after the Telegram channel run by Team Against Torture revealed them without her consent.
“Regrettably, the activists working for Team Against Torture didn’t ask me for permission to publicize information that concerns my work and my safety,” Milashina announced, blaming the same NGO’s irresponsible publicity for the 2016 attack on the journalists and human rights activists who tried to cross the Chechnya–Ingushetia border by bus.
“I thought at the time, and I still do, that the responsibility for what happened in March 2016 rests not only on those who commissioned and executed the attack, but also on Committee Against Torture,” the reporter concludes.
