The Czech Foreign Ministry said on February 16 that it and 22 other nations have nominated RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who has been detained by security officials in Russia for more than 120 days, for the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano 2024 World Press Freedom Prize.
The prize, created in 1997, is an annual award that honors a person or a group of people who make an "outstanding" contribution to the defense and promotion of press freedom across the globe despite the "danger and persecution" they face.
Kurmasheva, a Prague-based journalist with RFE/RL who holds dual U.S. and Russian citizenship, has been held in Russian custody since October 18 on a charge of violating the so-called "foreign agent" law.
Despite spending some four months in custody, the U.S. State Department has yet to designate her as wrongfully detained as it has other U.S. citizens held in Russia.
The designation would raise the profile of the case against Kurmasheva, effectively labeling it as politically motivated. Two other U.S. citizens held by Russia -- Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan -- have been designated as wrongfully detained.
Kurmasheva, who has worked for RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service for some 25 years, left the Czech capital in mid-May because of a family emergency in her native Tatarstan, one of Russia's many republics.
She was briefly detained while waiting for her return flight on June 2, 2023, at the Kazan airport, where both of her passports and phone were confiscated. After five months waiting for a decision in her case, Kurmasheva was fined 10,000 rubles ($109) for failing to register her U.S. passport with Russian authorities.
Unable to leave Russia without her travel documents, Kurmasheva was detained again in October and this time handed the charge of failing to register as a "foreign agent." Two months later, she was charged with spreading falsehoods about the Russian military.
Kurmasheva recently wrote from her prison cell in the Russian city of Kazan that her detention is “becoming slowly but surely less bearable."
Many critics and rights group say the so-called "foreign agent" law is used by the Kremlin to crack down on any dissent.
Moscow has been accused of detaining Americans to use as bargaining chips to exchange for Russians jailed in the United States.
RFE/RL's jailed journalists (left to right): Alsu Kurmasheva, Ihar Losik, Andrey Kuznechyk, and Vladyslav Yesypenko
Kurmasheva is one of four RFE/RL journalists -- Andrey Kuznechyk, Ihar Losik, and Vladyslav Yesypenko are the other three -- currently imprisoned on charges related to their work. Rights groups and RFE/RL have called repeatedly for the release of all four, saying they have been wrongly detained.
Losik is a blogger and contributor for RFE/RL’s Belarus Service who was convicted in December 2021 on several charges including the “organization and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order” and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Kuznechyk, a web editor for RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, was sentenced in June 2022 to six years in prison following a trial that lasted no more than a few hours. He was convicted of “creating or participating in an extremist organization.”
Yesypenko, a dual Ukrainian-Russian citizen who contributed to Crimea.Realities, a regional news outlet of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, was sentenced in February 2022 to six years in prison by a Russian judge in occupied Crimea after a closed-door trial. He was convicted of “possession and transport of explosives,” a charge he steadfastly denies.