Epress.am News from Armenia
If Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was killed in Turkey, for all the difficulties of the historical situation, the country’s leaders said that it was a shot in Turkey’s heart, said Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) radio station deputy chief editor Sergey Buntman, commenting on last week’s brutal beating of Russia’s Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin.
According to Buntman, the same situation is not perceived in Russia as being out of the ordinary, something that might be cause for everyone to be concerned.
“Such events are always expected, when the journalist does serious work, [he] works in such areas that require great courage, however small the company might be, or whatever economic intricacy. In this case, persecutions and violence become inevitable — remember the murders of [Mikhail] Beketova, [Anna] Politkovskaya, [Natalia] Estemirova,” he said.
During the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, said the journalist, the Russian president had directed a lot of cruel words toward Georgia’s president, “remarks that exceed even the norms of military policy.”
But it would be better if such remarks were directed at those who attack journalists, said Buntman.