"The Correspondent": lady-journalist from Kabardino-Balkaria moves to the States because of persecutions

Fatima Tlisova was regularly beaten and persecuted while working as journalist in Russia. However, on the day when last year she found her son of 16 at a militia station amidst drunken militiamen, who told her that the boy's name had been put into the list of suspicious persons, she decided to leave the country, "The Correspondent" magazine writes.

Ms Tlisova, who had worked for almost two years for the Associated Press in the Russian North-Caucasian region, is going to speak to the US Congress roundtable on human rights in the Caucasus.

This January, the New York Committee to Protect Journalists made a statement that since 2000 in Russia 13 journalists were murdered by contracted killers, which ranks Russia in the third place after Iraq and Algeria by journalists' mortality rate.

Fatima Tlisova said that her problems started in 2002, a couple of days after her article on abusive practice of militaries in Chechnya was published by the "Obschaya Gazeta."

She faced beatings, breaking into her apartment, poisoning and kidnapping; she did not apply to the militia on the latter occasion, since recognized officers of the local FSB (Federal Security Bureau) unit in the kidnappers.