Human rights activist and journalist Alexander Podrabinek went into hiding on Monday, saying he had received death threats after writing an article critical of Soviet military veterans.
“I received information from credible sources that a decision has been made at quite a high level to dispose of me in any possible way,” Podrabinek, a human rights activist since the 1970s and head of the Prima-News news agency, wrote on his blog late Monday.
“At present in the interests of security I have somewhat limited my contacts,” he said, calling his attackers “serious people with serious intentions.”
Podrabinek wrote an article criticizing a veteran group that lobbied for a Moscow restaurant’s name to be changed from Antisovetskaya, or Anti-Soviet, to Sovetskaya. He called the veterans former “camp guards” and “executioners.”
Pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, meanwhile, began a protest outside Podrabinek’s apartment building Tuesday and filed a lawsuit accusing him of defaming Soviet veterans.
Nashi was given permission to hold a protest outside Podrabinek’s home on Ulitsa Metallurgov in eastern Moscow, spokeswoman Kristina Potupchik said. “Thirty people demanded that he apologize, but he didn’t come out,” she said.
The sanctioned protest will continue at noon Wednesday, she said.
Nashi will call for Podrabinek to be expelled from Russia if he doesn’t apologize, Nashi leader Nikita Borovikov said in a statement.
Nashi also filed a defamation suit against Podrabinek at the Perovo District Court, Potupchik said.
Podrabinek wrote on his blog that he didn’t take Nashi’s actions seriously. “The problem isn’t Nashi. Their attack on me and my family is only a propaganda trick, an imitation of public outrage,” he wrote.
At the center of Podrabinek’s problems is an article published on Sept. 21 on the Yezhednevny Zhurnal online news service and on his LiveJournal blog. Titled “A Letter to Soviet Veterans,” it criticizes the Moscow Union of Veterans, which lobbied for the restaurant on Leningradsky Prospekt to be renamed. “You were so upset by the ‘Anti-Soviet’ name probably because you were guards in those camps and prisons, commissars in blocking detachments and executioners on firing grounds,” the article said.
The owner of the restaurant said he was forced to change the name this month under pressure from Oleg Mitvol, the prefect for the northern district. The veterans’ group had complained to Mitvol.
Reporters Without Borders appealed to the authorities to stop the “hate campaign.” “A man’s life and respect for free expression in Russia are both at stake,” it said.
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