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The sacking of Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov this week brings an end to a long-running feud between the Kremlin and Moscow city government. Grigory Pasko watches as a well-known enemy of free speech cries foul
Yuri Luzhkov, the now former mayor of Moscow, has written a letter to President Medvedev. And it is now clear that Medvedev fired Luzhkov from his post for… journalism. Luzhkov, the journalist, wrote the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in his letter to Medvedev, the guarantor of the constitution: “The reason for the attack were articles in Moskovsky Komsomolets and Rossiyskaya Gazeta. I’ll be honest, it was not I who wrote the article in Moskovsky Komsolets. But I do agree with it. Persecuting the mayor for agreeing with an article?”
Admitting plagiarism, asking rhetorical questions and writing about oneself in the third person – these are all signs of a high level of internal agitation, of course. And it goes without saying that, as a creative person, Luzhkov simply had to bring up that infamous year of 1937, the time of Stalin’s purge, when, in the opinion of the author, there existed in our country a “fear of expressing one’s opinion”. Well, since Luzhkov has decided to bring up 1937, I thought to myself, then that famous Russian metaphor of power, the jar of spiders, serves no purpose (the struggle for power has been known since time immemorial as the struggle of spiders in a jar).
And so here I sit, a journalist who has worked 33 years in the profession, and I am searching for the words to defend Luzhkov-the-journalist. I am not having much success, because the image of Luzhkov that has built up in my mind over the years is not a very positive one: he played the loyal yes-man to Putin in all of the latter’s dirty deeds; created the monster-monopolist party of United Russia; prohibited gay-pride parades; dispersed all kinds of dissenters’ protests with truncheons (i.e. violated the constitution).
In his letter to Medvedev, Luzhkov hints that he just might join the opposition: they have pushed him into such a corner (just where did he find any corners in that jar?) that there can be only one way out – into the arms of the opposition. Luzhkov-the-writer, however, is not in agreement with the opposition and calls its leaders “all those Nemtsovs over there”. [Boris Nemtsov, former reformist minister of Yeltsin]. Luzhkov the man who joined the opposition – now that’s really something! Much more exotic than “doctor of philosophical sciences Zhirinovsky” or “Zyuganov who joined the opposition”.
Luzhkov-the-journalist also managed to bring up the matter of censorship: he hurled a brave and directly aimed accusation about its existence right at the president himself. And immediately added for effect that Medvedev is a weak president, after which Medvedev immediately fired him. Because weak people (and Medvedev is most definitely such a person) very much dislike it when someone reminds them of this. It would be the same as telling Putin that he is a coward – you can immediately expect to hear some kind of unpleasant squeaked retort about circumcision or the ears of a dead donkey.
How can we not defend such a man, o citizens? Courageous and wise, decisive and, no need to be ashamed to admit it, a person of talent. All the more so given that, as he himself admitted, he wrote the article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the mouthpiece of the Russian government, himself. That is just what he tells the president: you asked – I wrote. After all, it was you yourselves that fell over my truthful and courageous political-essayist’s and castigator’s pen.
Here, it is true, one inopportunely recalls how this writer/political essayist/castigator had himself on many an occasion prosecuted fellow wordsmiths in his courts. But Luzhkov is now so pitiful and miserable that one wants to defend him. Decisively and immediately. To gently pat him on his bald head; to wipe away the tenacious tear, as big as a drop of honey; to utter a kind word… Maybe even – put up a monument to him, the great one. Something he no doubt has always silently hoped for.
<strong>Translated by Stephan Lang</strong>
<em>Grigory Pasko is a celebrated Russian journalist and a former Amnesty prisoner of conscience, following his arrest and imprisonment in 1997. He was awarded the Index International Whistleblower award in 2001 and the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize in 2007</em>
Sally Bercow, political commentator and wife of Commons speaker John Bercow MP has been threatened with libel action by Sir Andrew Green of think tank MigrationWatch, Index on Censorhip has learned.
Bercow received a letter from Sir Andrew’s solicitors on 17 September, demanding an apology and legal costs for comments made on an 18 August Sky news newspaper round-up slot.
Commenting on a Daily Express story migration and youth unemployment, Bercow said the article grossly oversimplified the migration debate, and that such oversimplification was “dangerous propaganda”. She claimed that arguments linking immigration to unemployment had been used by fascists such as Adolf Hitler and British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley. The Express article had quoted figures from a MigrationWatch study.
Bercow did not mention Sir Andrew, and made just a single reference to MigrationWatch in the allegedly libellous comment.
Sir Andrew has previously received apologies from publications including the Independent newspaper.
Index understands that Mrs Bercow is willing to go to court to defend herself against any libel proceedings, and sees this case as proof of the need for reform of English defamation laws.
Mrs Bercow unsuccessfully stood for election to Westminster council in the 2010 election.
Joanne Cash, a leading libel lawyer and Conservative party activist in Westminster, commented: “Political debate is essential to a healthy democracy.”
This seems an attempt to stifle such debate, which is no one’s interest.”
Simon Singh, the science writer who earlier this year won a case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association, said:
“Being sued for libel is a terrifying prospect, which is why the mere threat of libel is generally enough to shut up a commentator, silence an academic or gag a scientific journal. We hear about the rare cases when someone is prepared to stand up for themselves, but the bigger picture is one of journalists, scientists and many others who are scared into silence by an English libel law that is one-sided.
This is a guest post by Cecilia Anesi and Giulio Rubino
A rally “for life” takes place today, starting in Terzigno, a small city of a complex of three, with Boscoreale and Boscotrecase, a few kilometres away from Naples. Protesters will come from the whole of Campania region, since many feel Terzigno’s fight against a new landfill is their fight for an alternative way of managing waste.
Citizens of the three towns, located at the bottom of Vesuvius National Park, have been in turmoil for days, as the Italian government attempts to open a new landfill in the park.
Vesuvius National Park already holds a major landfill, built by the government two years ago, breaching the law that institutes national parks. Moreover, this landfill contains a mix of unprocessed solid and toxic waste, and although this breaches EU regulations in matter
of waste, the landfill was built — as others — by issuing an “emergency decree”. Moreover, the same emergency decree (dlg 90/2008 issued by Berlusconi’s Government) turned landfills and incinerators into “military areas” protected by state secrecy laws (issued by the Prodi government) and thus inscrutable for the people, civil authorities and the press.
A week ago the “Movimento per la difesa del territorio/Area Vesuviana” (Movement for the defence of Vesuvius Area) noticed the increase in the number of waste trucks that were entering the landfill. Naples was once again covered in rubbish, and the government had to quickly find a solution before a media scandal would explode again.
The solution was found in sending as many trucks as possible to Terzigno’s landfill. Hundred of citizens of all ages started blocking the entrance, scared that as soon as that landfill was been full the government would inaugurate a new landfill in a quarry few hundred metres away.
On the second day, riot police were called in the scene. On mainstream Italian media the protesters were shown for a few seconds, and although the reasons of the protest weren’t explained in depth, it was possible to see some seriously injured people. The blocade was violently removed by riot police, and the rubbish trucks were escorted inside and outside the landfill as if they were carrying gold. People were prevented from peacefully demonstrating, and from physically blocking with their bodies the access to trucks into the landfill.
Locals claim to have the right to protest, as it is the state that is acting against the law — firstly by opening a landfill in a national park, secondly by making it wihout following EU regulations, thirdly by breaching the internationally recognised right to health and life, and last but not least, because the government is not acting transparently and democractically by preventing both citizens and the press from entering the landfills of Campania.
Moreover, people have the right to protest because it is a fundamental right included into the Italian Consitution, and Berlusconi’s government is simply ignoring it.
But, as the citizens of Terzigno and other places of Campania will say, when the State thinks as a business and acts as a dictatorship, democracy can be proclaimed dead.