Russian journalist dies after setting herself on fire

Police officers and investigators searched her apartment the day before her death

Credit: TASS

A Russian journalist has set herself on fire and died outside police headquarters in an apparent protest against months of official harassment.

Irina Slavina, editor-in-chief of the Koza Press news website in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, died at the scene, her news outlet said.

Just an hour before she died by suicide, she wrote on her Facebook page: “Blame my death on the Russian Federation.”

Russia’s top investigative body on Friday confirmed Ms Slavina’s death and said they opened an official probe into self-immolation.

A day earlier, police raided her home in connection with an investigation into a man linked to an organisation bankrolled by exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Police seized her laptop, phone and notebooks, she wrote in a Facebook post: “They took away everything they could find. They left me with no means to work.”

К зданию МВД, где Ирина Славина совершила самосожжение, стягиваются люди. Но полиция всё перекрыла, никого не подпускают. pic.twitter.com/2UO1H9u2dW

— Штаб Навального в Нижнем Новгороде (@teamnavalny_nn) October 2, 2020

Ms Slavina, like many independent journalists in Russian provinces, faced persistent harassment from authorities for her work. She was previously fined for “disrespect to authorities” over a Facebook post, disseminating “fake news” as well as her efforts to organise a march last year to commemorate slain opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, a Nizhny Novgorod native.

Ms Slavina’s death has shocked many in Russia including opposition figures who have experienced government pressure first-hand.

Alexei Navalny, who is recovering in Berlin after a nerve agent poisoning, has blamed the government for pushing the journalist to commit suicide, calling it a “crime that not only law enforcement agencies of Nizhny Novgorod who have been harassing the city’s opposition for many months, should be held responsible for.”

“Those in the Kremlin who gave them orders should be held responsible as well.”

Residents of Nizhny Novgorod, a city of 1.3 million about 400 kilometres east of Moscow, were bringing flowers to the metro station near the police headquarters where Ms Savina died.