Alsu Kurmasheva
Washington D.C./09.11.23/Turan: National Press Club, a leading voice for press freedom in the United States, on Wednesday urged the U.S. government to immediately designate RFERL reporter Alsu Kurmasheva’s imprisonment in Russia as an unlawful and wrongful detention, signalling that she is being held as a hostage, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.
"The Biden administration is taking too long to make this important designation," Eileen O’Reilly, president of the National Press Club, and Gil Klein, president of the National Press Club Journalism Institute, said in a statement.
Kurmasheva, an editor with RFE/RL Tatar-Bashkir Service, was detained in Kazan last month and has been charged with failure to register as a foreign agent. She is the latest journalist to be jailed in Russia simply for doing her job, per Press Club leadership. "Journalism is not a crime. Secretary Antony Blinken and officials at the State Department should act swiftly to ensure Alsu is freed from her unjust detention," reads the statement.
“Alsu has been locked away for multiple weeks and the Biden administration shouldn’t wait another minute to make this critical designation, which will open up resources to support her release. It’s time for Alsu to come home to her husband and two children," the authors said.
The State Department on Wednesday refused to outline specifics of its wrongful detention designation. "As it relates to the formal wrongful detention designation that this department uses, that is an active and ongoing process," Prinsipal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said when pressed by TURAN's correspondent.
He went on to elaborate, "If you look at the cases that we have been public about their wrongful detention designation, they did not always necessarily start out that way. It is a process. Sometimes it happens incredibly quickly; sometimes the nature of the detention evolves. And we will take this process step by step"
Alex Raufoglu
Politics
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