Journalist sets herself on fire after ominous Facebook post
A journalist has died after she set fire to herself outside a government building one day after police raided her home.
Irina Slavina worked as editor-in-chief at Koza Press in Russia, a small local news outlet which advertised itself as having “no censorship, no orders 'from above’.”
The day before her death, she wrote on her Facebook page that police had searched her apartment.
In the post, Ms Slavina said while the search was carried out by 12 investigators and police officers, she was not allowed to call a lawyer.
The authorities were looking for brochures, leaflets and accounts from the opposition group - Open Russia, which is financed by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Ms Slavina also said all laptops, hers and her family’s, were seized, as well as notebooks.
Ms Slavina set herself on fire outside the local branch of the interior ministry in Nizhny Novgorod the following day, after leaving an ominous message on Facebook.
“I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death,” she wrote on Friday (local time).
Koza Press reported Ms Slavina died of her injuries.
Russia's Investigative Committee said it was opening a preliminary inquiry after a woman self-immolated in Nizhny Novgorod, a city of 1.3 million about 400km east of Moscow.
It did not name Ms Slavina in its statement.
The committee's local branch in the Nizhny Novgorod region later said that Slavina's self-immolation had nothing to do with the searches carried out at her apartment on the previous day.
It said she was only a witness in the criminal case for which the searches were being carried out.
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