‘Unjust Imprisonment’: Congressional Leaders Make Extraordinary Plea on Behalf of Reporter
World marks year of Russian capture of Evan Gershkovich
At a time when politics are fractured and bipartisanship is rarer than rare, the top Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill came together to issue a remarkable joint statement calling for the release of an American journalist who’s now spent more than a year in a Russian prison.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), as well as Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) issued the statement on behalf of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who marked one year of detainment Friday.
The lawmakers’ statement was just part of a worldwide coming together for Gershkovich, detained by Russian security services on charges of espionage in March 2023, marking the first time a journalist working for an American outlet had been arrested on charges of spying in Russia since the Cold War.
His detainment has been widely condemned as false and politically motivated.
“Evan Gershkovich, an American citizen and reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has now spent a year wrongfully detained by [Vladimir] Putin’s government. We continue to condemn his baseless arrest, fabricated charges, and unjust imprisonment,” the statement began. “Forty-five years ago, Evan’s parents, Ella and Mikhail Gershkovich, found refuge in the United States after fleeing the Soviet Union.
“On the anniversary of Evan Gershkovich’s captivity, we affirm the importance of his work,” the statement continued. “Journalism is not a crime, and reporters are not bargaining chips. The Kremlin’s attempts to silence Evan and intimate other Western reporters will not impede the truth.
“We repeat our call for the Russian government to release Evan, Paul Whelan and others it has wrongfully detained without further delay,” it concluded, referring to another American known to be detained by the Putin regime for political reasons.
The Journal published a unique edition Friday, in honor of Gershkovich, devoting the front page to him and related issues of press freedom and others wrongfully held in Russia.
Editors left much of the front page blank, under the banner, “HIS STORY SHOULD BE HERE.”
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