Russians protest against Moscow media stranglehold

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2006

MOSCOW (AFP) — A thousand people have protested in Moscow against the government's clampdown on independent media, five years after the Kremlin effectively took control of private channel NTV.

The protestors, who included well-known television reporters who have lost their jobs, brandished placards reading "Today censorship, tomorrow dictatorship" and "Down with Kremlin-TV".

"I have had enough of the lies on television. The government thinks it is king and we are its slaves," Vera Valkovskaia, a housewife holding her small son on her shoulders, told AFP Sunday.

"I have lived in the Soviet Union, but this is enough, I don't want to anymore," she added.

Viktor Chenderovitch, a writer and former NTV presenter, said "Russia has changed a lot" since the...