Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 16 – The Open Omsk portal has announced that
Viktor Korb, a prominent independent journalist and human rights activist in
that city, is now being sought for arrest on the basis of trumped up charges (rmx.ru/?p=100001235). Suspicious that
this was about to happen, Korb fled to Kyiv two weeks ago (victor-korb.livejournal.com/1732667.html).
The
Omsk journalist has been one of the leaders in that Siberian city in coming to
the defense of others whom the Putin regime has sought to repress and silence,
and his work has been recognized by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International,
Reporters without Borders, Memorial and others (region.expert/viktor-korb/).
The author of these lines is
especially disturbed by this news because only yesterday I wrote up one of Korb’s
most recent articles about the nature of regionalism in Russia as a Window on
Eurasia (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/03/russian-regionalists-as-diverse-as.html).
Fortunately, Korb is now in Ukraine beyond
the immediate reach of the Russian siloviki and where one hopes he will receive
political asylum until changes in his homeland allow him to return to Omsk. One
can only hope that he will remain safe and active and that those changes will
come sooner rather than later.
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