[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”108305″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]The morning of 9 April did not promise to be out of the ordinary for Sevinc Osmanqizi, an Azerbaijani journalist based in the suburbs of Washington DC. She started her morning routine by making a fresh pot of coffee and readying her two sons for school. Prior to starting the daily broadcasts of her YouTube-based OsmanqiziTV channel, she checked her messages, which included links sent by friends to a broadcast that had aired a few days earlier on the recently-launched Real TV in Azerbaijan.
The host of the broadcast was all too familiar to Osmanqizi. It was her former colleague Mirshahin Aghayev, known to the TV-viewing public by only his first name. She saw her picture on the studio background monitors, and then heard her own voice. “It was a complete shock,” she said, describing her emotions. “This [was broadcast on] national TV, so why is my voice there, why am I hearing my personal conversation?”
The 9 April 2019 broadcast replayed a series of private voice messages Osmanqizi had exchanged with a media colleague who is in exile in Germany. “My first question was ‘how did they get ahold of it?’ The conversation took place more than a month prior. I was trying to remember the details. I couldn’t remember what platform I had used [to communicate]. This was one of many conversations that I’d had, it was personal,” she said. Some time later, she still seems disturbed by the incident. “I was asking myself, ‘if they have this conversation, what else do they have?’”
As Osmanqizi watched the rest of the broadcast, she grew more anxious. “It contained direct hints that they had more. They ran ads saying so.” In the next two weeks, the situation worsened, she said.
The channel that Aghayev operates, where he hosts his TV show, began airing information she said she had never shared on social media, including photos. Aghayev ominously promised his audience that they would see “much more.” In subsequent broadcasts, Aghayev revealed a series of intimate emails between Osmanqizi and a US-based man who Aghayev claimed was working for US intelligence services. He also insinuated that Osmanqizi herself was on the payroll of US special services, and threatened to air intimate photos and videos of her.
“I began to understand this is not a one-man operation, there is definitely official involvement,” Osmanquizi said, implying the involvement of the government of Azerbaijan.
“I immediately got very worried about her, and about another person she had a conversation with, after the broadcasts,” said Gulnoza Said, a senior researcher with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based media freedom watchdog. “I was outraged because any conversation that two people have should remain private, and should never be used as state propaganda or to harass a journalist. And that’s exactly what we dealt with in Sevinc Osmanqizi’s case,” she said.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Been there, seen that
Said and others’ concerns were not unfounded. Although Aghayev and his TV channel have scaled back their threats to air intimate photos, videos, and her remaining correspondence, these were not empty threats. Sonia Zilberman, South Caspian Energy and Environment Program Director at Crude Accountability, an environmental and human rights organisation in Washington DC, said that alarming parallels came to mind when she heard about the threats against Osmanqizi.
“This isn’t the first time. The case with Khadija Ismayilova was even more excruciating,” she said, referencing the 2012 case in which the Azerbaijani government had been widely criticised for airing intimate footage that had been obtained through illegal surveillance of another Azerbaijani female journalist. Ismayilova’s reporting on government corruption involving the country’s “first family” became sufficiently problematic that the authorities resorted to blackmail. Ismayilova was filmed at a private residence with a male companion, and was blackmailed with stills of video footage from a camera installed in a ceiling light. She was warned to stop her journalist investigations, and when she refused and disclosed the attempted blackmail, the video footage was leaked online.
“Talking at a human level, the amount of pressure that the Azerbaijani journalists face is enormous. Not only inside the country, but as we are seeing right now, outside the country as well,” Zilberman said. “Their personal lives are being infiltrated, they are constantly under pressure.” At the same time, she added, the pressure shows how far the Azerbaijani government is willing to go, and how dirty it is prepared to play.
Said agreed. “Khadija Ismayilova’s case was the first thing that came to my mind when I spoke to Sevinc. Also, I recall many other cases when women were harassed or extorted, or attempted to be extorted, by similar means.”
Whereas Khadija Ismayilova was illegally surveilled and recorded inside Azerbaijan, Osmanqizi’s data was collected while she resided in the United States. This is a cause for some additional concern, according to Said. “We have known for some time, and have heard allegations that the Azerbaijani authorities practice surveillance of journalists and opposition members in the country,” she said. “The case with Osmanqizi [showed] that they may go as far as to target Azerbaijanis with critical views living outside the country. This is very concerning.”
The similarity between Ismayilova’s case and the threats against Osmanqizi were not lost on other journalists. A number of media and journalism organisations issued statements condemning the actions of the Azerbaijani authorities. Both Said’s and Zilberman’s organisations have issued statements in support of Osmanqizi, and Deutsche Welle and others tweeted their support. One Free Press Coalition included her name in the 10 “Most Urgent” Threats to Press Freedom Around the World.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]“We are everything they are not”
The Azerbaijani authorities have been pouring millions, if not billions, of US dollars into “reputation laundering” to improve its standing in the west. Said noted that Azerbaijani authorities employed different tools, such as hiring respectable PR firms in Washington and some European capitals, and allegedly bribing some parliament members in Europe. “People like Sevinc Osmanqizi, or other journalists who live abroad and try to show to the world the real face of the Azerbaijani authorities, defeats the whole [set of] policies of the Azerbaijani authorities in creating their positive image,” she said, adding that the government perceives critical voices living outside the country as enemies they want to silence.
Osmanqizi’s YouTube channel airs daily broadcasts and call-in shows in Azerbaijani, and offers biting criticism of the government of Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, who is often chastised by international governments and organisations for his anti-democratic policies and imprisonment of journalists. She offers opinions not available on the government-controlled Azerbaijani media. She provides airtime to opposition figures and dissidents to whom other Azerbaijani television has been hostile for many years.
Osmanqizi is not alone.
Hebib Muntezir was nominated for a 2016 Freedom of Expression Award for his work at Meydan TV.
“Since there are no normal conditions for free and independent media to function inside the country, and the local media are under control of the government and oligarchs, no one can directly criticise the authorities. So, in the last few years, many journalists and bloggers have left the country because of the persecution and pressure against them and their families. They started to create new media abroad, so they could continue their professional work. That is why these types of exiled Azerbaijani media have been mushrooming,” said Habib Muntezir, member of the board of the Berlin-based MeydanTV YouTube channel.
Osmanqizi said she “simply cannot” broadcast from within Azerbaijan. “I would be arrested the next day. That’s a clear cut case.”
What unites nearly all YouTube-based channels broadcasting from abroad is their stance in opposition to the current Aliyev government. “You can only show one side of the story. You cannot be impartial. In order to be impartial, you would have to cover all sides of the story. But if [the officials] refuse to talk to you, your platform becomes partial and lopsided. They label you ‘opposition,’ ‘activist’ media. But, as a journalist, you might be forced into this category against your wish,” he explains, saying that even independent experts on non-political matters are afraid to speak to independent exiled media sources for fear of persecution.
These channels form a diverse tapestry of voices, and vary in audience size, length of establishment, frequency of broadcasts, and most importantly, level of professionalism. Some are headed by professional journalists like Osmanqizi, a veteran alumna of the first independent TV channel ANS, where she had for years worked side by side with Aghayev, the host of broadcasts attempting to intimidate her. After leaving ANS, she worked for the BBC in London. Her channel has around 120,000 subscribers, impressive for a country the size of Azerbaijan.
Other channels, launched by people who lack journalistic experience or education, are often merely outlets for their operators to voice criticism of the government in the form of crude and insulting insinuations and rants. Some of these have impressive audiences, as well, as people look to them as the outlet for voicing their own pent up anger and frustration.
“Nowadays in the Azerbaijani media, there are very few professional journalists. Many were originally activists, people with courage, and they gain experience on the job. Lack of formal training leads to mistakes that violate media ethics, and some unprofessional action. Pressure and fear of persecution by the government are lowering the quality of the Azerbaijani media,” Muntezir said, noting the impact of an unfree society on both sides of the camera or microphone.
“If the environment were free, if people didn’t freeze with fear whenever they saw a microphone, if citizens were not afraid to speak to media, if the government, president, and ministers talked to the free media, we would not live in a blockade state,” Muntezir said.
According to Osmanqizi, when it comes to attacks on exiled media, “the government is losing the competition” for the hearts and minds of the public. “We are everything they are not,” she said. “What they are lacking is the truth, the reality. People see themselves in our programs, they recognise their problems, which is not the case with government-sponsored TV programs. That is why they tune into our channel.”
In her view, the choice between traditional and online media is really a choice between information and disinformation, and the latter is very easy to identify, she said. “You cannot fool anyone and make them believe that Real TV or [state broadcaster] AzTV is real news. People only watch them when they lose their remote control,” Osmanqizi adds, laughing.
The new internet-based TV channels offer the chance for the people to express their own opinions, and to hear the voices of average citizens they identify with. “They participate,” she explains. “Unfortunately, this is not something that can be done from inside Azerbaijan.”
Viewers are calling from inside the country for better journalism, and sometimes their support for the hosts of foreign-based channels speaking truth to power may cost them their freedom. Osmanqizi said this fate befell her viewer, Elzamin Salayev, after he recorded a video appeal condemning Aghayev’s campaign against her. According to Osmanqizi, he was given a fifteen day prison sentence for condemning Aghayev and questioning his morals for threatening to broadcast her intimate footage.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Camera… Lights… Attack!
There is very little doubt in the mind of Osmanqizi and others interviewed for this article as to where the orders for the attacks on journalists originate. “I have absolutely no doubt that they’re coming from the highest political leadership of Azerbaijan,” Osmanqizi said.
It is common knowledge in Azerbaijan as to who stands behind attacks appearing in the Azerbaijani media. Both Osmanqizi and Muntezir point to Ali Hasanov, an aide to the president on political and social affairs, as the architect of the attacks. “The order to attack is coming from Ali Hasanov and his group. I call the people who plan these attacks the presidential apparatus trolls,” Muntezir said, referencing Hasanov’s office as part of the president’s executive office. “The [TV] channels are being directly ordered what to broadcast. XazarTV is owned by Hasanov’s son, Shamkhal Hasanov. SpaceTV is owned by Sevil Aliyeva, the sister of the president.” The channels, he argued, are completely subservient to the authorities.
Osmanqizi agrees. “Hasanov has been the president’s media adviser for 23 years. He was Heydar Aliyev’s advisor, and now he is Ilham Aliyev’s advisor.” Heydar Aliyev, the nation’s former president, passed the helm to his son Ilham.
Earlier this year, Mirshahin Aghayev, the journalist from Real TV who threatened Osmanqizi, received a medal from the state security ministry (MTN) commemorating the 100th anniversary of “State Security and Foreign Intelligence Services.” The medal was awarded by Ilham Aliyev’s presidential decree and presented to Aghayev by MTN’s head of public affairs, Arif Babayev, during a ceremony at the TV station. In footage of the event broadcast on Real TV, Babayev calls Aghayev “someone we love very much.” Osmanqizi was dismayed that a journalist would be awarded such a medal by the intelligence service, and more so, that the ceremony would be proudly broadcast. She also wondered about Aghayev’s accomplishments that merited such an unusual recognition. “What has he done for them?” she asks. “Have you heard of any such thing in another country?”
Aghayev has been a prominent journalist in Azerbaijan since the early 1990s. He began his career at ANS TV, the first independent media source in the country after the fall of the Soviet Union. He gained popularity with daring broadcasts that blurred the line between news reporting and opinion. In a country where there was no alternative to rigid state-controlled TV news, his reporting was a breath of fresh air, revitalising the media environment.
A degree of criticism was tolerated by the senior Aliyev’s regime, and ANS was allowed certain journalistic liberties. The government invariably pointed to ANS when defending itself against domestic and foreign critics who accused it of persecuting journalists. However, the Azerbaijani government’s toleration of ANS ended on 29 July 2016 when the station’s licence was revoked after ANS broadcast an interview with Fethullah Gülen, an exiled Turkish cleric based in the United States who Turkey was attempting to extradite.
“ANS was shut down because it broadcasted reports that were not in line with presidential apparatus policy,” said Muntezir. “The condition to return ANS’s licence was that it would begin working under the direct supervision of Hasanov, and not broadcast a single sentence without the presidential apparatus’s approval nor stray from its dictates,” he said.
Prior to and during the controversy around ANS, Aghayev benefited from his stardom by teaching journalism. He was regarded as an institution.
He re-emerged from relative obscurity in March 2018, when the government granted a licence to a new broadcaster, Real TV. Aghayev took the helm at Real TV, and since then has been attacking and using insults and his signature word play and intentional slips of the tongue to smear anyone who dares to disagree with or criticise the authorities. Both Osmanqizi and Muntezir say that the motivation for allowing Aghayev back on the air and installing him at the helm of a new TV channel was the government’s need to counteract exiled media and critics of the regime who were outside its legal reach.
“[Before being allowed back on TV] Mirsahin [Aghayev] was made to promise that he would go on air every week and attack not only the opposition, but also those who think differently from the government. Otherwise, he could not return to TV. And he does so, every week,” said Muntezir. He added that Aghayev’s recently-launched Real TV was issued a new broadcast licence.
On 7 April, Aghayev made one of the most notorious appeals in the history of his editorial broadcasting. Using word play and double negatives, he called for treating opposition members “as if they did not have the Azerbaijani identity card,” meaning non-citizens with no rights. “If we did not live in a democratic country, I would call on emergency medical personnel not to treat them, bus drivers not to allow them to board buses, bread sellers not to sell them bread. But we live in a democratic society,” he said on the air. Media experts and lawyers in Azerbaijan have debated whether these words rise to the level of hate speech, and quite a few of them agreed, in interviews, that it did. So do many members of the opposition.
On April 21, Aghayev issued an ultimatum to Osmanqizi on his TV broadcast demanding that she stop her critical YouTube broadcasts, “or else.” When she refused, she said, “on 28 April my intimate materials were aired.”
In addition to airing private conversations and email correspondence pertaining to Osmanqizi, Aghayev also said that Osmanqizi had asked him to assign her to conduct interviews with local businesses. Imitating her manner of speech and voice inflection, he accused her of seeking to benefit financially from puff pieces that she would air. Aghayev and Osmanqizi had worked together at ANS between 2008 and 2013. He had been her supervisor.
Finally, on 16 July, Aghayev doubled down against the chorus of condemnation, and admitted in a television interview that he is no longer unbiased, something his critics accused him of for quite some time. “Now we have a position. It is impossible to have a position and remain unbiased. Now, we take a side,” he is quoted as saying in an article, promising to be “even more harsh, and give everyone what is due to them.” The irony that was not lost on anyone in the country, judging by numerous public comments on social media, that it was ANS TV that had made him iconic and brought him his following. For years, ANS had started and ended its broadcasts with the slogan, “Reliable, Conscientious, Unbiased.” [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Trollin’ trollin’ trollin’/Don’t try to understand them/ Just rope and throw and brand ’em
The government of Azerbaijan not only uses terrestrial broadcasters, such as Aghayev’s Real TV and other television channels that it controls, but also utilises armies of fake accounts to discredit dissident journalists, known as troll factories.
The comments sections of YouTube videos posted to OsmanqiziTV, MeydanTV, and other critical channels are full of comments from people with fake names and accounts. These comments often contain threats, insults, inane arguments or praise for the ruling regime.
But the measures taken by the Azerbaijani government to sideline, marginalise and silence critical voices in exiled media, although impressive, do not appear to be working, according to both Osmanqizi and Muntezir.
“People don’t believe them, definitely,” Muntezir said of the trolls. “It is wrong to say that the people don’t know the truth, and cannot separate fact from fiction. They know the truth very well, and are aware of what is going on in the country. They are aware of the trolls and their work. They know the Azerbaijani government supports them, they know they spread lies.”
According to Muntezir, this troll network is neither professional nor effective. “They open a new profile with no picture, a clean slate. They repeatedly copy and paste the same text, often from presidential speeches. They paste the text under content that is not even political,” he explained, saying that even news stories about football have comments citing Ilham Aliyev’s speeches and heaping praise on the government.
Muntezir said he has a good guess as to the identity of the people behind the troll profiles. “I know it for a fact that they compile reports about their work. It might be a student, or a teacher, or a government employee. Once a week, it is their turn, and they are sat down and made to copy and paste comments. They have to report how many comments they make, and support the data with screenshots. They have dedicated Whatsapp groups,” he said, referencing the smartphone app through which the trolls purportedly communicate and receive their marching orders. “People have repeatedly sent me screenshots of those conversations. They have lists of media sources they are expected to attack. But they burn themselves too fast, they operate unprofessionally,” Muntezir said.
According to Osmanqizi, the effect is exactly the opposite of the goal. She calls it the “boomerang effect.” “We are more popular, and have wider reach. On the other hand, they are not serving their target. They have not proven effective because nowadays, people can differentiate the truth from the lies. People have grown accustomed to the constant attacks accusing us of things we have not done,” she said. “They know it is propaganda. It is a lie machine.”
She said these efforts “only prove that what we are doing is important. The government of Azerbaijan is wasting its resources and money to combat its rivals and critics [because it cannot tolerate criticism].” She calls the attacks on her “the government’s defence mechanism,” because the government does not like being held accountable. “The people understand it’s a matter of accountability,” she said. “[Holding the government accountable] is something media in Azerbaijan should have been doing, but since the free media has been marginalised and destroyed [in the country, the people] appreciate our work.”
Muntezir believes that idea behind troll factories originated in Russia. “Putin started doing this with a higher degree of professionalism. Our [officials] talk about the integration with the west, while copy-pasting all of the disgusting things from Russia at the same time.” He describes the quality of the Azerbaijani trolls as akin to “Chinese-made counterfeits of the original.”
Osmanqizi, no stranger to mass troll attacks on the comments section under her videos, said that the attacks prove the effectiveness of exiled media. “If it was not the case [that exiled media was effective], we would not be targeted… They woke up one day and realised they can no longer influence public opinion. It is being formed beyond their reach and authority. Now they are playing catch-up, and they have not been very creative. They cannot prevent people from watching us. All they can do is smear and harass,” she said.
Crude Accountability’s Zilberman agrees with the ineffectiveness of the government’s tactics. “I think the government is shooting itself in the foot by dishonouring the Azerbaijani women who provide access to information inside their country. In any country, dishonouring somebody personally is really shameful, because the attack is personal, and not professional.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]As a former friend and colleague of Mirshahin Aghayev, this was a difficult article for me to write. It took a long time, because in the middle of writing about trolls, I myself have become the target of a wall of faceless, nameless hordes and a mass concerted effort against my online presence. I needed to distance myself from the attacks, and regain my composure, to ensure I could resume working on this article as impartially and honestly as I could.
To make matters worse, much worse, I suspect that I have become the target of attacks not by pro-government trolls, but trolls working for one of the largest opposition parties in Azerbaijan, which declares its adherence to principles of democratic development and freedom.
Following my broadcast of an interview with an opposition group member in which he criticised the leader of a much larger opposition party, I was singled out and barraged by insults, insinuations, and homophobic comments (I am openly gay in a country considered the most homophobic in wider Europe). This was a shocking experience for me, as I myself did not utter a word during the part of the interview about the opposition leader, and considered the comments by my guest to be measured and within ethical norms that did not merit my interruption.
What was shocking and bewildering to me is that these attacks came from the opposition party for which I admitted voting when I lived in Azerbaijan decades ago. I felt betrayed by the very people whose ideals I believed in and whose rights I had been trying to defend, and whose plight I had been trying to publicise in my work.
I understand that in a country with a ruthless regime playing dirty with anyone who dares to dissent, opposition parties must employ some of the government’s tactics in order to protect themselves and survive. If the government employs throngs of trolls to smear the opposition, the opposition must do something similar in order to protect itself. It is understandable that some of the proponents of opposition leaders have taken it upon themselves to engage in smear campaigns and vicious personal attacks against me. They saw me, as the owner of the channel, as ultimately responsible for whatever criticism that was voiced against their beloved leader.
I had time for little other than deleting insults from the comments sections of my videos for two days straight. My Facebook page was shut down numerous times (I lost count after eight suspensions in the span of four days). There were mass complaints against my account for “impersonating someone else.” First, I had to send a picture of my ID showing my personal data. I would regain access. Then, Facebook demanded a picture of me holding the ID. Rinse, repeat.
Once my account was unblocked, I made a passionate, and somewhat angry, appeal to the leader of the party in question. Not mincing words, I told him I had no longer considered him a friend of free press, since he had remained silent in the face of attacks by his party members against a journalist doing his best to do honest work. I called on him to deny that his party employed trolls, like many of his supporters had claimed on my Facebook page and in public comments. I called on his party to reject troll tactics, condemn them, and unequivocally state that trolls are detrimental to civilised public discourse in our country which is under ruthless dictatorial rule.
None of that happened. During an appearance on a YouTube broadcast, his supporters proceeded to call me “an American pig” (I am a United States citizen), and said that “they had lists of those they would hang when they come to power. I was on them.” Strangely, these comments were not blocked or deleted during or in the hours after the broadcast.
Due to the bizarre logic of “enemy of my enemy is my friend,” I found myself defended by pro-government newspapers, Facebook pages and journalists. The very same ones that had, a year earlier, run shaming headlines leaking pictures of my wedding (to another man) and calling me an abomination or far worse. The shame of being defended by regime apologists is the worst thing with which I must now come to terms.
At the time, the party denied any involvement. Officials and supporters alike demanded that I produce screenshots of the comments. Though I had deleted most of them out of sheer embarrassment, I was able to send them the ones I and my friends had saved. There were denials that these commenters had been affiliated with the party in question, but my friends pointed to their profiles, which showed that they were. Then the response was that these accounts had been hijacked by government trolls to attack me. At that point, I stopped following the zigzags of disingenuous denials. However, I have heard privately from friends that a few of the party’s members “have been chided,” and were told not to use slurs regarding sexual orientation. I will take that.
The very nature of trolling means people do not use their real names or pictures most of the time. They do not pose for avatar pictures holding their party IDs in their hands. I cannot name names, but I did what I could. In addition, I know for a fact that I was not the first, nor will I be the last person to be attacked by the trolls affiliated with this particular political party. There have been numerous cases before me, and I believe the public was on my side. I feel I was vindicated. I learned a valuable lesson in the process: speaking truth to power does not entail just the regime; at times, it means even the pro-democracy opposition. This was a shocking and unpleasant discovery that informs the direction of my future work. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The author of this piece, Ismail Djalilov, previously worked with Mirshahin Aghayev at ANS. Djalilov and Sevinc Osmanqizi did not coincide with each other at ANS. He is also host of duzdanisaq (Straight Talk), a YouTube channel broadcasting into Azerbaijan.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Monitoring and Advocating for Media Freedom” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-times” color=”black” background_style=”rounded” size=”xl” align=”right”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s Monitoring and Advocating for Media Freedom project documents, analyses, and publicises threats, limitations and violations related to media freedom in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, in order to identify possible opportunities for advancing media freedom in these countries.
The project collects, analyses and publicises limitations, threats and violations that affect journalists as they do their job, and advocates for greater press freedom in these countries and raises alerts at the international level.
The project builds on Index on Censorship’s 4.5 years monitoring media freedom in 43 European countries, as part of Mapping Media Freedom platform.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”Incidents by month: Azerbaijan” full_width_heading=”true” category_id=”34499″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Press Freedom Violations in Azerbaijan” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]
Incidents can be in more than once category.
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Death/Killing
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Physical Assault/Injury
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Arrest/Detention/Interrogation
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Criminal Charges/Fines/Sentences
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Intimidation
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Blocked Access
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Attack to Property
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Subpoena/Court Order/Lawsuits
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Legal Measures/Legislation
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Offine Harassment
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Online Harassment
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DDoS/Hacking/Doxing
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Censorship
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Total
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Employer/Publisher/Colleague(s)
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Police/State Security
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Private Security
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Court/Judicial
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Government official(s)/State Agency/Political Party
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Corporation
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Known private individual(s)
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Another Media Outlet
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Criminal Organisation
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Unknown
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Argentine Embassy in London and Anglo-Argentine Society remember late writer and journalist with two events in British capital. Read the full article.
В Украине за период с 1 февраля по 30 июня было зарегистрировано 16 инцидентов, в которых журналисты подвергались физическим нападениям, и 17 случаев, когда на представителей СМИ не только напали, но и повредили им аппаратуру.
Об этом сообщает международная организация Index on Censorship, публикующая материалы о защите свободы слова во всем мире. Read the full article.
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Independent media sources have been hamstrung by restrictive legislation and police, governmental, and private interference. Physical assaults, detentions, lawsuits, fines, and blocked access are common. Many outlets have chosen to practice self-censorship to protect themselves. Strict new laws limiting press freedom have been introduced, despite having progressive press laws from the 1990s still on the books and a constitutional article guaranteeing freedom of the press.
Out of 175 violations recorded in Russia by the Monitoring and Advocating for Media Freedom project between February and June 2019, 20 were physical assaults that came from political figures, police structures, known private individuals and unknown perpetrators. Several of the cases are egregious examples of how physical violence is used to target journalists in Russia.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-times” color=”black” background_style=”rounded” size=”xl” align=”right”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s Monitoring and Advocating for Media Freedom project documents, analyses, and publicises threats, limitations and violations related to media freedom in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, in order to identify possible opportunities for advancing media freedom in these countries. The project collects, analyses and publicises limitations, threats and violations that affect journalists as they do their job, and advocates for greater press freedom in these countries and raises alerts at the international level.
The project builds on Index on Censorship’s 4.5 years monitoring media freedom in 43 European countries, as part of Mapping Media Freedom platform.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Case studies: Egregious physical violence” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”107961″ img_size=”full”][vc_custom_heading text=”Vadim Kharchenko” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]On 1 June, Vadim Kharchenko, a Krasnodar-based blogger and author of Lichnoe Mneniye (“Personal Opinion”) YouTube channel was assaulted and shot by two unknown men, which he reported in a video posted to his blog. About two weeks before the incident, he had received an anonymous call from an individual, who introduced himself as a policeman willing to provide evidence that local policemen had tortured detainees and fabricated criminal cases against innocent people. Kharchenko agreed to meet the man, who told him that he had to urgently leave town and could only meet near the airport in the late evening. However, no one came to the meeting. On the way back to his car, Kharchenko heard someone call his name and turned around. He heard two gunshots. When he ran towards the shooter and wrestled him to the ground, another person stabbed him in the liver and right arm. When Kharchenko tried to fight the second attacker, the first shot him in the back. Both attackers fled, shouting “Vadim, leave [the town]”. Kharchenko then went to a hospital and documented his injuries – three gunshot wounds, two stab wounds and a concussion.
The Krasnodar police said they were looking into the incident. Kharchenko is now recovering and undergoing treatment to restore movement in his right hand. He crowdfunded for medical expenses on his channel, which enabled him to travel to a Moscow clinic for treatment.
Kharchenko believes the attack was motivated by the content of his YouTube channel, but does not know who was behind the attack. His channel criticises local authorities, reports and comments on protests and detention of activists, and conducts investigations into alleged abuse of power by the police.
In summer 2018, Kharchenko lost his job at a private security firm because of his blogging activity, and his car was set on fire. In 2017 he was assaulted twice: first, he was hit by a car; second, he was hit in the head with a metal tire lever and stabbed with a 4-inch nail by an unknown man. Neither attacker was found.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”107963″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_custom_heading text=”Boris Usahakov” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]On 14 March Boris Usahakov, a coordinator of Gulagu.net project which exposes cases of torture, survived an attempt on his life in the city of Vladimir. Head of the project Vladimir Osechkin reported the attack in a video posted to the Gulagu.net website.
According to Osechkin, Ushakov was returning home from a store when he saw a silhouette in a dark alley. When the man saw Ushakov, he drew a gun from inside his coat and aimed at him. Ushakov, who had received death threats before (the police ignored his reports), immediately began running away from the gunman and heard gunshots. He was able to hide in an apartment building and call the police. Instead of a police squad, an ambulance arrived and attempted to take Ushakov to a psychiatric hospital. The plan failed, as Ushakov was on the phone with his colleague, who stated loudly that she was recording the conversation and would bring the police malpractice to public attention. The police arrived soon after, but did not examine the premises and refused to investigate the crime scene.
Ushakov reported on dozens of cases of police brutality and torture in prisons of Vladimir region for Gulagu.net. On 2 April, Ushakov was arrested after being questioned by police about the attack, and held in police custody. He told his colleagues that the policemen discussed planting drugs on him. He was later released, likely because of public outcry around the case.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”107964″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_custom_heading text=”Vasily Utkin” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]On 3 April, sports journalist Vasily Utkin was assaulted with tear gas by an unknown individual, he reported on his Telegram channel. The attack took place late in the evening after the training session of the amateur football team Egrisi, where Utkin is a frequent guest. A young man in a grey hoodie approached Utkin as he walked to his car and sprayed him in the face with tear gas. The assailant also filmed the attack with his smartphone, “for the accountability record”, Utkin said.
“There is only one reason and only two people who would like to organise this. I was talking about it in the last episode of my show”, Utkin said, referring to his YouTube show Football Club. In the last episode, he discussed so-called Aguzarov-gate – the scheme in which Alan Aguzarov, the personal lawyer of the head coach of the Russian national football team, Stanislav Cherchesov, used his connections to Cherchesov to sign football players up for contracts, promising selection to the national team.
Utkin decided against going to the police to report the assault, and said it would simply be a waste of time. This was not the first attack on Utkin — in 2001, he was stabbed twice in the back with a screwdriver by an unknown assailant. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Journalists face perils when covering protests” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_custom_heading text=”Russia is infamous for its violent treatment of protestors. Journalists have found that their press credentials do not protect them.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]On 1 May at least two journalists and one blogger were detained while covering a sanctioned opposition rally in Saint Petersburg, according to Zona.Media and OVD-Info. This included YouTube blogger Nikita Zabzanov, who was forcefully arrested and had his camera confiscated. He was later released with no charges. Freelance photojournalist Georgiy Markov and Oleg Nasonov, a photojournalist with St. Petersburg-based online news outlet Dva Stula, were also detained despite identifying themselves as members of the press. Makarov was assaulted by the police during his arrest. According to Makarov, he was struck in the ribs and head with rubber batons, and his arm was bleeding. He was held at a police station for two and a half hours without any charges, and was later hospitalised. A total of 131 people were detained at demonstrations across 11 Russian cities on the same day.
On 14 May Anna Mayorova, a photographer with Ura.ru news agency, was attacked with tear gas while covering protests against the construction of a church in a public park in Ekaterinburg, Ura.ru reported. Mayorova did not see who sprayed tear gas at the crowd, but noted it was one of the “ripped fighters” who arrived at the scene and confronted the activists. The police did not catch the perpetrator. Mayorova and numerous other people at the protest were injured by the tear gas.
On 15 May another Ura.ru photographer, Vladimir Zhabrikov, was kicked by a policeman, who told him to “take away his lenses”. Zhabrikov had a press badge on him.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Journalists in Russia are frequently assaulted while working on stories” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_custom_heading text=”Government officials and private security often target the journalists investigating them.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”107566″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]The story of Meduza special reporter Ivan Golunov received media coverage around the world. Golunov was detained in Moscow on 6 June on suspicion of drug dealing, an accusation that the Kremlin later admitted had been entirely fabricated. He was stopped on the street by several policemen, who searched his backpack and claimed to have discovered a package with an unknown substance. One more package was reported to have been found in Golunov’s apartment. Golunov denied all accusations, and insisted that the drugs had been planted.
When Golunov spoke to his lawyer the following day, the latter discovered that Golunov had been bruised and injured. According to the journalist, he was threatened, punched and kicked while being interrogated at the police station. He was denied an ambulance.
The situation drew massive attention throughout Russia, with hundreds of people, many of them members of the press, protesting in front of the prosecutor’s office in Moscow alone. Journalists from a variety of outlets, from partisan to state media, all condemned Golunov’s arrest and called for a fair investigation and trial. On 11 June, Golunov was released and all charges against him dropped in an uncommon victory for Russian civil society. The investigation is ongoing, but the tide has turned against the police officers who initiated the arrest.
On 27 May, Ivan Litomin, reporter of state-owned TV channel Rossiya 24, was physically assaulted and thrown to the ground. His attacker was Sergey Zaytsev, head of the Shirinsky district in the Khakasia region, Rossiya 24 reported.
Accompanied by a film crew of two people, Litomin set out to interview Zaytsev, investigating the discrepancy between the official’s luxurious mansion and the poor-quality houses provided by the government to those who lost their homes in wildfires in 2015. Zaytsev behaved aggressively toward Litomin and tried to take away his microphone. He then grabbed Lidomin and threw him to the ground, shouting “Go away, I’m telling you, get out of here”. Zaytsev’s aides pushed Lidomin out of the office and tried to prevent the cameramen from filming the incident.
After the video of Lidomin’s attack went viral, Evgeny Revenko, secretary of the ruling political party, United Russia — of which Zaytsev is a member — publicly apologised. United Russia also expelled Zaytsev. The state Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Zaytsev on charges of obstruction of journalistic activity.
Zaytsev called the incident “a planned provocation,” and claimed that Litomin fell by himself rather than being pushed. “They broke into my office outside of working hours and started calling me a corrupt thief, saying that I had a criminal past and asking if I was ashamed of being the head of the district. It lasted ten minutes. It was impossible to talk to the journalist. I tried to push him out of my office. He was actively protesting. How can it be an assault, when three big men broke into my office, where I was alone, and two of them were physically stronger than me?”, Zaytsev told state-operated news source RIA Novosti. Zaytsev filed a complaint with the police, attempting to prosecute Litomin for “offence of a representative of the government”.
On 20 March, three reporters for the media outlet Rosderzhava, Andrey Oryol, Alexander Dorogov and Pavel Tsibulyak, were physically assaulted while trying to investigate inside an office building, Mediazona reported. The reporters accompanied an ex-employee of PromMash Test company to the company’s offices to investigate the circumstances of her firing. They were met with hostility and physical violence. Over fifteen of the boss’s deputies started beating the reporters, following them to the street as they fled and continuing to assault them. The attackers took their cameras, phones, documents and wallets. Oryol and Dorogov ended up in the hospital.
Deputy chief editor of Rosderzhava Yan Katelevskiy told Mediazona that there had been no investigation of the incident. In fact, the journalists themselves could be prosecuted, as PromMash Test filed a lawsuit against them for hooliganism. Oryol has since left the country for rehabilitation. Katelevskiy insists that PromMash Test’s CEO Alexey Filatchev and his brother, both ex-FSB employees, took part in the beating.
Boris Ivanov, a YouTube blogger and reporter with Rosderzhava who filmed the bloodied car and patch of ground near PromMash Test’s office after the incident took place, was detained near his home in Moscow on 4 June, OVD-Info reported. According to Ivanov, the policemen did not identify themselves or explain the reason for his arrest. They twisted the journalist’s arm, took away his phone, and brought him to Tverskoe police station. After the arrival of Ivanov’ lawyer, the policemen released him without any charges.
On 20 March, Ilya (his last name was not disclosed), a part-time local correspondent for 47news, was assaulted by a security guard at Gazprom’s Sotsinvest construction site, 47news reported. The incident took place near Lesnoye village in Leningrad oblast, where the company is constructing a large logistics center. Ilya was assigned to film the premises using a drone. He was stopped by a security guard near the entrance. The guard called for reinforcements, took away Ilya’s equipment, hit him in the face, and threatened to “fucking drown” him. The police were called to the incident. They took away Ilya’s drone and recorded in their report that the attack came from “an unidentified person”. Gazprom provided no commentary. The logistics center is reported to have cost 15 billion rubles, three times the proposed budget, according to a recent expert report from Fontanka.ru. 47news vowed to publish a new investigation about Gazprom.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”“Legislation is only effective in a society governed by the rule of law“” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]
David Filipov (Photo: Tufts)
Press freedom in Russia is largely defined by practice, David Filipov, a former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post, told Index on Censorship.
“Lots of places have good press laws. But legislation is only effective in a society governed by the rule of law. Russia is not one of those,” he said. Countries like Russia have the ability to limit the freedoms embedded in their constitutions through legislation passed by rubber stamp parliaments, and root out or weaken civil society institutions that ensure the protection of citizens from abuse by government.
Russia’s legislation — examples of which the Monitoring and Advocating Project reported on in its previous report on Russia — curbs the reporting of investigative journalists in particular. While there are many intrepid reporters in Russia, “the state is constantly focused on an effort to root out media outlets that produce great investigative reporting, and replace that with statist, loyalist noise,” Filipov said.
The current media environment is vastly different from the 1990s, when the Russians had “a brief taste of US-style media.” Filipov said that when media is operated as a business rather than an “affair of the state”, reporters can investigate and report. When media becomes an instrument of the authoritarian state, reporters can only parrot the party line. “Unfortunately, in Russia, and, increasingly, in various other states, authoritarian leaders have latched on to the idea that controlling media means prolonging power”, he said.
Filipov emphasised that authoritarian states like Russia have a constant need to restate their legitimacy: “Why are we forced to take harsh measures? Because our freedom is in danger! We are for freedom! But there are enemies who would take it away!”
He recounted meeting a member of NOD (natsional’noye osvoboditel’noye dvizheniye, or “National Liberation Movement.”) in the “protest pit”, the only place near the Sochi Olympics where people were allowed to demonstrate. “The sole protester was telling me she supported ‘Russia’s sovereignty’ and opposed ‘attempts from outside forces to take it away’, and therefore supported Putin,” he said, calling it a bland version of the mantra he heard at the NOD rallies, where the effort to dismantle “Russian sovereignty” is described as a foreign-inspired aggression against ‘the real’ Russia, which needs to be met with popular force. “And therefore, if we can show, using our twisted logic, that a certain journalist is an aggressor, then that ‘aggressor’ needs to be met with force.”
Filipov told Index that since all civil society protections against the abuse of power by pro-government mobs have been subverted, such as the courts, co-opted, such as human rights ombudspersons, or dissolved and officially discredited, such as NGOs, there is no one left to properly call out the abuses by pro-government non-official entities. “But if someone brings it up to Putin during his press conferences, he can say, ‘Give me the names of these people, I will investigate. We cannot have such abuses in our country”.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Press Freedom Violations in Russia” font_container=”tag:h2|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]
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Death/Killing
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Physical Assault/Injury
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Arrest/Detention/Interrogation
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Criminal Charges/Fines/Sentences
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Intimidation
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Blocked Access
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Attack to Property
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Subpoena/Court Order/Lawsuits
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Legal Measures/Legislation
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Offine Harassment
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Online Harassment
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DDoS/Hacking/Doxing
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Censorship
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Total
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Employer/Publisher/Colleague(s)
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Police/State Security
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Private Security
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Court/Judicial
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Government official(s)/State Agency/Political Party
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Corporation
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Known private individual(s)
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Another Media Outlet
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Criminal Organisation
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Unknown
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