You're reading: Father of Russian coma journalist demands justice

MOSCOW, Nov. 8 (Reuters) - The family of a Russian journalist lying in a coma after a savage beating said on Monday that authorities must find his attackers quickly to prove they are serious about protecting free speech.

Two men used an iron bar wrapped in a bunch of flowers to attack Oleg Kashin, a political reporter with Kommersant newspaper, near his Moscow apartment at the weekend. They smashed his legs and fingers in one of a long line of attacks, often fatal, on Russian reporters.

"It’s a potent challenge to the authorities. They must find them… those scumbags," Vladimir Kashin told Reuters outside the hospital where his son remained in the coma on Monday which doctors induced to aid the recovery.

"By doing this a 10-minute walk from the Kremlin, they are not just throwing down a challenge to the media. They are throwing down a challenge to everyone," he said.

There have been 19 unsolved murders of journalists in Russia since 2000, including the 2006 killing of Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The CPJ lists Russia as the eighth most dangerous country for journalists in the world.

President Dmitry Medvedev, who has repeatedly pledged to boost civil society and give people more freedom to criticise the authorities, promised for a second time on Monday to catch the attackers of 30-year-old Kashin.

"It was a targeted act and those responsible must be exposed and punished," Medvedev said in remarks carried on state TV.

Two days after Kashin suffered two broken legs, a damaged skull and two fractures to his jaw, the attack remained the main story on state-run news, which has played down similar attacks in the past.

But critics, who say that little has changed since Medvedev came to power in 2008, have called for more concrete results.

"NOTHING WILL BE SOLVED"

"It’s just words, nothing will be solved," said Kashin’s friend and fellow blogger, Rustem Adagamov, one of half a dozen protesters staging a rolling protest outside Russian police headquarters to demand the attackers be found.

Rights body, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said on Monday that the authorities should "finally turn their declarations into real action".

A second journalist from a regional paper suffered a concussion after an apparently unrelated attack near Moscow on Monday.

Investigators said in a statement that Kashin’s work was the most likely cause of the attack.

Kommersant offers only mild criticism of the authorities, but Kashin upset some people through his critical investigative reports about extremist groups as well as opposition and pro-Kremlin youth movements in the paper and his popular blog.

Dmitry Zhdakayev, one of Kashin’s editors, said there were several theories about what article might have led to the attack, including a campaign to halt the building of a road through the protected oak forest on the edge of Moscow.

A local newspaper editor who campaigned against the road had fingers and a leg amputated after a similar attack in 2008.

Footage from security cameras broadcast on television on Monday showed one of Kashin’s attackers holding him down while the other repeatedly hit his legs and hands with a bar.
"The blows were so brutal, his little finger was hacked off. It’s incomprehensible," said Kashin’s father. "I hope he will survive. I believe it. But what will happen then, I don’t know."