journalists

“Discover yourself. Decide what you want to do and do it,” Mikhail Gershkovitch always advised his children. Danielle took up swimming and Evan took up football.

Years later the little blue-eyed boy would meet his mother’s watery eyes, one love after another stubbornly ignoring the intervening glass cage that kept them from getting lost in each other’s arms.

Something reminiscent of the old days. And suddenly reality. In a courtroom his parents see him for just a few minutes before making their way back and leave behind Russia and their son imprisoned for “espionage”.

«He acted on the instructions of the American side and collected state secrets about the military“, states the indictment. THE Evan Gershkowitz he followed his father’s advice.

Evan Gershkowitz, the reporter

He discovered his destiny very early on and followed militant journalism. It was not enough for him to put the right words together. He wanted to be at the center of events. And he did it by returning to the birthplace of his parents, Mikhail and Ella, two Russian Jews who grew up in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. Those early years taught them to be careful. Very careful.

Michael remembers his own father telling him as advice and legacy: “if you’re going to tell a political joke, make sure there are no witnesses.” Michael and Ella immigrated to the US in 1979, seeking to escape growing anti-Semitism and life under Soviet rule. They met in Brooklyn in the 1980s, married and raised their family in suburban New Jersey.

Evan was brought up admiring Russian culture, Russian culture, Russian literature. He learned to speak English and Russian equally well for it, and his desire to return to Russia and practice journalism there found no barrier to his use of the language.

He worked as a reporter for the Moscow Times, Agence France-Presse and the Wall Street Journal. Whenever his mother worried that his articles would “bother” him, he reassured her by telling her that they were “accredited Kremlin journalist».

“He felt blessed by the Kremlin’s accreditation. He always talked about the love he had for Russian culture, tradition, literature,” said Anne Simmons, WSJ Moscow Bureau Chief.

A political pawn in Putin’s hands

Forty years after Mikhail and Ella fled Soviet Russia, their only son has become a political pawn in a new Cold War. Evan overnight became a human bargaining chip for Vladimir Putin, while relations with the US were and remain strained following the invasion of Ukraine.

Evan Gerskovich spent his 32nd birthday in the eight square meters of his cell in Lefortovo prisona prison designed to make inmates “feel abandoned,” according to the Wall Street Journal report.

Photo Credits: REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/File Photo

It was built by the tsarist authorities in 1881. For many years it was a place of torture for hundreds of dissidents, and today it is mainly used by the KGB’s successor agency, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, as a place of temporary detention.

“Evan is a thoroughly professional journalist who has been arrested by the FSB on apparently false charges of espionage. Journalism is not a crime. Evan should be released immediately,” Pjotr ​​Sauer, a journalist for The Guardian and a close friend and former colleague of Gershkowicz, told the Committee to Protect Journalists via messaging app.

They had preceded the statements of the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharovawhich could not be more clear about the “management” of journalists.

“How many years were they provided with conditions that were absolutely favorable. All that is over now. Now they will live in a new way. If they do their job in a professional manner, they will work, if not, then foreign journalists will not work. If they treat us, our country and our people rudely, then they are simply not welcome here.”

In the Press Freedom Index, a press freedom ranking compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders, Russia ranks 155th out of 180 countries, just above Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Evan Gershkowitz’s latest report: “Russia’s Economy Begins to Collapse”

Perhaps the cruelest irony is that Evan Gershkovich deeply loved Russian culture. His goal as a reporter, family and friends say, was to portray the country in its full complexity. “Russia’s Economy Begins to Collapse,” was the headline of the latest report he published on March 28 in the WSJ.

“Investment is down, work is scarce, budgets are being squeezed,” Evan writes. The Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska, is featured in the report with the most characteristic statement: “There will be no money next year.”

Evan was “no longer welcome” in Russia. Two days later he is arrested in Yekateribung in the Urals. The first American journalist to be accused of espionage since the Cold War.

“He felt that he had the rare journalistic privilege of reporting on a country that had embarked on Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II, and that understanding what both the elite and the general population felt was an urgent matter for him. journalistic mission,” wrote The New Yorker’s Joshua Yaffa a day after Gershkowitz’s arrest.

Speaking to Margaret Sullivan of the New York Times, Anton Trojanowski said: “Evan’s arrest was a huge shock on a personal level and it was also a shock on a journalistic level. We took that as a message that the risks were too serious to report on the ground there.” Russia has not been a safe place to be a journalist for many years.

A Time magazine report says at least 39 members of the media have been murdered in Russia since 1992, although until Evan’s arrest, accredited American journalists felt relatively safe. Not anymore.

On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in his message: “Freedom of the press is the foundation of human rights (…) But, in every corner of the world, freedom of the press is under attack.

Journalists and media workers are being directly targeted, online and offline, as they carry out their vital work. They are systematically harassed, intimidated, arrested, imprisoned.”

The name of Evan Gerskovich was not mentioned, but many connected the words of Antonio Guterres with the illegal detention of the journalist.

One year of illegal detention

It’s been a year since Gerskovich’s arrest and the Russian court extended his detention for three months, until June 30, 2024. There was another extension before that, and no one will be surprised if another one follows when the June deadline expires.

Photo Credits: REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina

According to Interfax, Evan Gershkovich is being prosecuted under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code, a charge that carries a 20-year prison sentence. He has made repeated appeals against his detention, with the US ambassador to Russia, without success. Lynn Tracyto characterize the decision “especially poignant as this week marks one year since Evan was arrested and wrongfully detained, simply because he was doing his job as a journalist».

“Evan’s case is not about evidence, due process, or the rule of law. It’s about American citizens being used as pawns to achieve political goals, as the Kremlin is also doing in the case of Paul Whelan,” he added. Whelan was arrested in Moscow in 2018. He was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020.

Photo Credits: Moscow City Court’s Press Office/Handout via REUTERS

The Biden administration called the accusations ridiculous and the President himself publicly called for Evan’s release. In a rare joint statement, the leaders of the US Senate and House of Representatives called for his “immediate” release.

“We strongly condemn the arbitrary detention of this American citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter,” Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Mitch McConnell wrote in their statement. The two top members of the US Congress are demanding “the immediate release of this independent journalist who is respected around the world.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Gershkovich could be freed at some point in a Russian prisoner exchange abroad, but so far no such deal has been struck.

He was arrested for doing his job

“He keeps his mind occupied by reading books and writing letters to his friends. Every day that Evan is in prison is a very long day. He remains happy and grateful for the support of his family, friends and everyone who has been watching his difficult situation,” added Lynn Tracy, who has managed to visit him six times in Lefortovo prison.

Photo Credits: The Wall Street Journal/Handout via REUTERS

At the same time, the head of the New York Times office in Brussels, Matina Stevi-Grindnev, said: “He was arrested in Russia for doing his job. The freedom of the press is a central pillar of democracy and it is being shaken everywhere, in the developed and developing world, even here in the European Union.

As we support Evan, who at the age of 32 has found himself unjustly a prisoner of Putin, we also support all our colleagues who are targeted for their work in prisons in Turkey, Gaza, Ethiopia and so many other countries.”

«I want to scream and say “Give me back my son”. It’s very hard, but I’ll be there smiling. I’m going to smile at Evan and they’re not going to see my tears.” Evan’s mother kept her promise. Her wide smile, inches away from her watery eyes, was what Evan Gerskovich wanted to see to keep fighting.