Who are the authorities fighting?
The recent developments into investigations of Russian journalists’ murders, the attempts to accuse publicists and writers in extremism and other crimes along with Duma’s legislation activities, prompts the thought that the major task of Russian authorities is to fight against media and writers, rather then criminals.
On 12 September, Kommersant reported that the prosecutor’s office of Moscow Central Administrative District closed the criminal investigation into the March death of Kommersant defense correspondent Ivan Safronov because of ‘an absence of foul play’.
Safronov threw himself out of the staircase window in his apartment building without any obvious reason: he had a successful career and happy family life. He was a respected military correspondent who often covered sensitive issues in the fields of defence, army and space. The prosecutors opened a criminal case on ‘incitement to suicide’, but failed to find either those who may have prompted the journalist to commit suicide, or any personal motives for taking his own life. At the same time, according to Kommersant’s deputy editor, Iliya Bulavinov, investigators totally neglected the possibility of work-related inducement to suicide, and the case was not fully investigated.
On 27 August, the Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika claimed the arrest of 10 suspects into the prominent investigative reporter from Novaya gazeta, Anna Politkovskaya. Four of the suspects have been charged. Chaika also reported that besides the members of a criminal gang, some current and former police and Federal Security Service officers helped organising the murder. The reports brought some hope to the murdered journalists’ families and colleagues, as this was the first more or less effective investigation following around 47 murders of journalists in Russia since 1992, considered work-related.
However, in the two days following Chaika’s report, two former policemen, suspects in Politkovskaya’s murder, were released. Moreover, the prosecutor’s statement on the masterminds of the murder seriously confused the journalist’s colleagues. Novaya gazeta’s Roman Shleinov reported that the Prosecutor General ‘repeated almost word for word a statement President Vladimir Putin made in the immediate aftermath of Politkovskaya’s murder, blaming forces outside Russia for attempting to undermine the current situation in the country.’ For Novaya gazeta’s journalists this was a sign that any further investigation would be politically influenced.
Politicised murders are very hard to investigate, given the high level of corruption in Russian law enforcement agencies. Nevertheless, some serious cases are actually investigated, although the investigations rarely lead to charges.
In June 2004, well-known St Petersburg journalist Maksim Maksimov disappeared. The investigators managed to find and arrest the suspects. Two witnesses provided a full description of Maksimov’s murder, and others added details. The story appeared in local and international media many times. But since the suspects were experienced officers from the corruption division of Internal Affairs Ministry, the prosecutors had trouble bringing them to justice. The formal reason for this is the fact that journalist’s body was never found. Meanwhile, unofficial sources says, the suspected officers boast that they have high-ranked patrons who will soon help them to get free.
Yet, Manana Aslamazyan, the head of the Educated Media Foundation, the organisation which provided professional training for Russian journalists, after mistakenly violating the administrative code, was branded a criminal right away. The foundation was shut down. In Nizhny Novgorod police confiscated all Novaya Gazeta’s computers ‘to check for unlicensed software’; Krasnodar prosecutors found ‘signs of extremism’ in the books of respected political scientist Andrey Piontkovsky; Moscow prosecutors threatened the lawyer and writer Pavel Astakhov with a libel case, because Astakhov had described corrupt Russian policemen in his novel. The well-known historian and journalist Vladimir Pribylovsky is suspected of extremism. The celebrated satirist Victor Shenderovich is suspected of inciting ethnic and national hatred. When someone shot at Moscow investigative reporter Andrey Kalitin, police refused to open a criminal case based on murder attempt, insisting that this was just a case of hooliganism.
The state Duma seems to support these developments. The parliament’s lower chamber is ready to consider a new bill that bans mentioning the nationality and religion of crimes and their victims. Rather then beating nationalism and extremism, this law will obviously hamper spreading the information on hate crimes and nationalism in Russia. The previous Duma’s anti-extremism amendments gave the law enforcement agencies more opportunities to silence journalists and suspend media.
Investigating contract-style murders, disappearances, and motiveless suicides, is certainly much more difficult then bringing libel cases and catching journalists and educators red-handed for rules violations. Hopefully, the new government, which is meant to fight corruption, and the next parliament, will at least change the priorities in the work of law enforcement agencies. Otherwise, when it comes to the journalists and writers, this work looks more like witch-hunting than fighting with criminals.
Burma: the environmental pillage
The Burmese junta, responsible for the brutal crackdown on recent protests against the authorities’ decision to hike fuel prices at a time of worsening economic conditions, is bankrolling its regime by exploiting the country’s vast natural resources at the expense of the Burmese people and environment.
Oil, gas, gold and timber – amongst other commodities – are being ruthlessly sought out for extraction, sale and export abroad, often with the help of complicit foreign companies. According to campaigners, the trade in these natural resources has been linked to serious human rights and environmental abuses, including killings, forced labour, deforestation, pollution, land grabbing and compulsory relocation.
The trade in Burmese timber has been particularly responsible, say pressure groups, for a disturbing number of violations and, in some cases, accused of being directly to blame for perpetuating armed conflicts and insurgency inside the country. Much of the timber coming out of Burma is being exported to China and other Asian manufacturing hubs before finding its way onto the high streets of Europe and beyond.
Highly valuable Burmese teak and other hardwood is used in all manner of products from garden furniture to decking for luxury yachts. Index found a number of UK companies openly selling teak from Burma despite accusations from environmentalists that this trade in ‘blood timber’ is unacceptable.
Campaigners argue that despite large profits being made by the Burmese junta, and timber suppliers, manufacturers and retailers, little or none of this wealth is filtering back to the Burmese people. They are calling on companies and governments to cease doing business with the Burmese regime to help severe the revenue gained from these unsustainable trades.
Although images and reports of the recent protests and subsequent crackdown were seen around the world and helped to reignite global interest in south Asia’s ‘forgotten’ country, critics say the ruthless exploitation of the country’s resources – and the involvement of outsiders – has been woefully under-reported.
In Shwegyin township, in Burma’s Nyaunglebin District in eastern Pegu, large-scale logging operations sanctioned by the state-run Myanmar Timber Enterprise (MTE) – part of the government’s Ministry of Forestry – have been linked to murders, violent attacks and the ongoing harassment of local Karen people.
Problems initially began back in the 1990s when the area was first militarised, but have grown acutely since construction of a controversial and dam was given the go-ahead. As land upstream of the dam was due to be flooded, rampant logging and other resource extraction was actively encouraged.
According to US advocacy group Earth Rights International (ERI), in 2006 the Burmese military were redeployed to the region to challenge Karen control and to open up and maintain fresh timber and mining concessions nearby. The group claims that many villagers in the area have been displaced, some reportedly hunted down in the nearby mountains and shot onsite.
Others have been forced to pay money to the military, had their crops and other food sources destroyed, and been coerced into forced labour. Investigations by ERI have revealed how the Burmese regime as a whole, forestry officials, the military and private companies all profit from the trade in timber from the region whilst local inhabitants are forced to live in increasing poverty.
The MTE has contracted out much of the logging operations in the region to private companies, on condition that at least 35 per cent of the logs are sold back to them, for onward sale and profit. The military itself, along with local militias, in turn demand ‘protection money’ from subcontractors employed to physically undertake the logging.
After being chopped, the logs are hauled through the forest and loaded onto boats or trucks for transport to sawmills. The timber is then purchased for use internally or export abroad. Campaigners fear that once all the forest in the immediate vicinity has been stripped, the military, closely followed by forestry officials and logging companies, will move into adjacent, largely untouched areas, and begin the cycle of destruction again.
‘The situation [in Shwegyin township] is pretty dire – there’s virtually nothing left, the logging companies, and the mining companies, and just about everybody else has stripped the place bare,’ one Bangkok-based activist told Index, ‘ the worst thing is that this is being repeated all over Burma.’
East of Pegu Division, on the Thai-Burmese border, the trade in timber has been equally rife, and been responsible, according to campaigners, for continuing the cycle of armed conflict between the Burmese army and the myriad of insurgent groups operating in the area. All parties have been implicated in the logging of teak as a source of revenue, in some instances reportedly funding the purchase of arms and other contraband goods.
China continues to be another major importer of Burmese timber however, much of it illegally sourced by Chinese logging companies operating inside Burma under the gaze of corrupt officials. This trade alone is thought to be worth $250 million annually; overall timber exports from Burma have accounted for as much as 9.3 per cent of the country’s legal foreign exhange earnings in a single year.
Advocacy group Global Witness, which first raised the alarm about the role played by timber in perpetuating conflict – the group highlighted in 1995 how the Khmer Rouge were trading timber to fund its murderous regime in Cambodia – argues that the continued logging of Burmese forests jepoardises any chance of peace or sustainable development in the country.
Chinese companies have been identified as supplying Burmese teak and teak products to retail markets elsewhere in the world. In the UK, despite vigourous campaigns by activists, Index has discovered that a number of timber firms continue to sell teak from Burma.
NHG Timber Ltd, based in Sanderstead, Surrey, offers Burmese hardwood for sale as planks, boards and logs; marine specialists Hawke House, based in Gosport, Hampshire, uses Burmese teak for decking destined for use in the manufacturer of luxury yachts; and the Oxfordshire-based Timbnet retails sawn teak amongst other hardwoods. Pressure groups say that furniture made from Burmese teak is frequently found for sale in both specialist and high street stories.
Whilst there is no suggestion that these – or other – companies are directly involved in any illegality or wrongdoing, campaigners argue that anyone doing business with Burma is contributing to the suffering of the country’s people and environment: ‘Companies trading in goods and commodities such as oil, gas, timber, gems and clothing are directly or indirectly helping keep the regime in power,’ a spokesperson for the Burma Campaign UK told Index.
The group is not calling for a complete boycott of Burma, but targeted economic sanctions that they believe will help cut the economic lifeline to the Burmese government.
At the time of writing, democracy activists, students and journalists inside Burma continue to face persecution for organising, participating or reporting on the recent dissent against the increase in fuel prices. Safely investigating the role natural resources are playing in propping up the regime is virtually impossible internally. But, say campaigners, the outside world has a duty to highlight those playing a part in legitimising the Burmese junta by doing business with it.
Burma: a history of opression
The press censorship laws in Burma are draconian to say the least. In its latest move the Burmese military junta has disconnected telephone lines of journalists, leading politicians and activists to curb free the flow of information to the world outside.
One journal editor, worried about the disconnection, told Index that the authorities had disconnected over 20 mobile and landline phones in a week.
‘They disconnected some of my colleagues’ mobile and landline phones and of some leading politicians. The junta should not have disconnected the telephones of journalists,’ he said.
The regime has cracked down and arrested peaceful demonstrators who have been protesting over the sudden fuel price hike in mid-August. During the initial demonstrations, media workers and others managed to dispatch news and photographs to the Burmese Internet and broadcast media in exile. After that, the regime tried to block the free and unbiased flow of information outside the country.
The Press Scrutiny Board (censor board) has been restricting reporting news of these demonstrations in the domestic media.
‘Some reporters visited the scene of demonstrations. But they did not try to report the news as they knew that such reports would be censored by the board. This is understood by everyone,’ a Rangoon-based weekly journal editor told Index.
‘I think the monks gave a deadline in their ultimatum to the regime. [The junta] seem to be trying to block and prevent news from spreading to the outside world. So they disconnected mobile and landline phones of those who have frequent contacts with the outside world,’ he added.
Initially, the peaceful demonstrations were started by the 8888 generation students. Then the monks joined it along with party members of the NLD, which posted a landslide victory in the 1990 general elections but was not allowed to take power.
Government-backed Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) members beat up the demonstrators and arrested them. Amnesty International claimed there were at least 150 arrests during these crackdowns and that the number of political prisoners has reached 1,200. The official figure is just 60.
The tension was growing when the army and the USDA beat the protesting monks on 5 September in Pakhokku. It was after this that four monks’ unions demanded that the regime apologise to the monks, roll back the fuel and essential commodity prices and engage in dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to resolve the current political crisis. The monks set their deadline on for 17 September. The monks’ unions appealed to the 400,000-strong monks in Burma to boycott the regime by not accepting alms offered by them if they did not concede to their demands by the deadline.
Meanwhile, the regime issued a statement threatening that the NLD would be outlawed for inciting and instigating the current demonstrations. The junta also disconnected the NLD landline phone in its headquarters and at least 10 mobile phones of its members.
‘Our landline has had no connection for both incoming and outgoing calls since Wednesday. We didn’t enquire about it, but just lodged a complaint to the exchange,’ NLD spokesperson U Nyan Win told Index.
The military regime has been tapping the phone lines of politicians and political activists for a long time. But they intensified the tapping after 2005, and now they have disconnected the phone lines.
‘They always tap the phones. Now it is very clear that they are not just tapping these phones but even disconnecting the lines, not only of politicians and activists, but also journalists,’ Burma Media Association (BMA) Secretary Ko San Moe Wai said.
We tried to contact the Myanmar ministry of communication but to no avail. A staff from Naypidaw Auto Telephone exchange department (a branch of the ministry) told Index, ‘Naypyidaw exchange and Yangon exchange are different departments. Please contact the concerned exchange.’
USDA members also attacked and harassed journalists who covered the protests by snatching their cameras and beating them.
‘When I got to Hledan junction traffic light, I saw USDA members in front of the protesters. They blocked the way and shouted ‘strike the photographer’ when I tried to take a photograph. I had to flee from the scene immediately. I escaped, but some were hit by them,’a reporter from a Rangoon-based foreign wire agency said.
The regime also blocked the YouTube website, where people could view video clips and footages of the ongoing demonstrations.
Moreover, Internet speed has slowed down significantly since the first week of September.
Burmese journalists recalled the days of free media for a month in the heydays of the 1988 uprising.
‘In those days, when the entire administrative machinery had collapsed, we could publish what we wanted to. We printed from any press we had a close relation with. There were no arrests, no censors. The people were well informed in those days. We published these papers until the day before the coup on 17 September, 1988,’ the journalist said.
When the military grabbed power again from the Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) government, they tightened the censorship rules even more.
They amended the colonial-era Printing and Publishing Act in 1996. Under the newly enacted law, possession and use of a fax machine without permission and sending and receiving email without authorisation can lead to imprisonment, or a fine, or both. Moreover guidelines were set in the 11 censorship rules (commandments) for printers and publishers who are forbidden to print material containing sexual matter, violence and supernatural violence among other subjects.
But the regime liberalised in some areas. They gave more permits and license for journals and magazine publications. The censor board was shifted from the Home Affairs ministry to the Information Ministry in October 2004, after the ousting of the once powerful General Khin Nyunt.
After that they granted more publishing permits to journal and magazine publishers. Now the total number of private journal and magazine permits has reached over 200.
‘Previously when the censor board was under the Home Affairs ministry, they gave such permissions only to government departments and the real publishers and editors had to hire these permits and license by paying some fees, about 20 per cent to the license owner. Now this hire permit system has been abolished,’ a journal editor said.
‘Some censorship rules have been liberalised. We are a little bit freer in 2006-07 than in 2004-05,’ he added.
But under a plan of ‘attack media with media’, Information Minister U Kyaw San, Industry Minister U Aung Thaung and Lt Gen Htay Oo of USDA are conducting disinformation campaigns against Burmese media groups in exile, offering economic incentives to some domestic journalists and pushing them to write pro-regime articles and reports. At the same time the government-backed USDA and Myanmar Women’s Affairs Federation (MWAF) visited government offices and talked to government employees on how the reports of Burmese media groups in exile are baseless and concocted.
In press conferences they let their touts ask pre-arranged questions, and in return give some minor scoops that need not be passed by the censor board. Most of the time they put pressure on publishers to print their propaganda articles and reports in almost all journals and magazines on a mandatory basis. Thai-based BMA Secretary Ko San Moe Wai said that this is in total and sheer violation of press freedom.
‘Free media simply means unbiased and objective coverage. We report what we see based on concrete facts and figures. We shall point out the weakness frankly, should we find any. This is what free media is,’ he added.
The veteran journalist said that the real challenge for all domestic journalists is to report what they see and feel, at the risk of being arrested and their publishing permit being terminated.
‘We all have our own feelings. We have to put media ethics and media norms on the back burner and have to think only of our survival. We have to ask ourselves how long will I be able to write. We have to put media norms in second place,’ he added.
Another veteran journalist told Index how domestic journalists have to write in an evasive manner, using cryptic language, in order to get stories past the censor board.
‘We cannot give our message to our audience directly. We have to write cleverly, comprehensively, to cover the message that we want to give. It’s very difficult for us to get our reports and articles past the magnifying glasses of the censor board,’ he said.
Pyapon Ni Lon Oo was fired as chief editor of Cherry magazine in 1997 for allegedly getting involved in politics. He told Index: ‘Nowadays the censorship is too tight. There are many censors now. Writers cannot write directly, but have to write indirectly and cleverly.’
He added that the censor board censored not only individual articles, but also looked at the writers and their background and their track record in politics.
‘The censor board has its established rules. But it never follow its own rules. If the writer is their man, or pro-regime, they overlook the rules and pass articles without scrutiny or screening. If not, they won’t pass it, in total disregard of the story. The rule depends on the individual. It shouldn’t be so in a free media.’