Russia: “Defamation suits a key factor in suppressing free speech as long as Vladimir Putin rules the country”
Earlier this month, Russia’s Department of Presidential Affairs won three defamation lawsuits against newspaper Novaya Gazeta in just one week.
“The court is being used as a censorship instrument; it has been serving officials rather than law lately”, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov told Index on Censorship.
The Department of Presidential Affairs of the Russian Federation is a state executive authority responsible for logistical support and social amenities for Russian federal authorities.
“Novaya Gazeta” is a twice-weekly newspaper owned by media tycoon Alexander Lebedev and the former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. It is famous for its investigations and criticism of authorities.
In the week of 14–20 November Moscow’s Basmanny Court passed judgements on three libel claims brought by Department of Presidential Affairs against Novaya Gazeta. They all concerned publications about federal budget spending for controversial purposes.
One of the articles concerned firms close to the Department of Presidential Affairs which took part in drawing budget funds while reconstructing Russia’s main memorial to soldiers of World War II — the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Kremlin wall. The article contained a supposition that 91 million roubles were withdrawn from Russian federal budget for reconstruction works which might have had already been done.
The Department of Presidential Affairs filed a suit against Novaya Gazeta and the article’s author Roman Anin, claiming the information about alleged misapplication of funds was defamatory. The other two defamation suits the Department won against “Novaya Gazeta” were brought in response to articles about its controversial transactions with short-lived companies, and high staff salaries which exceeded the ones publically declared.
The newspaper will also have to pay the Department and personally it’s head Vladimir Kozhin 100 thousand roubles (2049,77 GBP) in damages for the article about extremely high salaries. This article’s author Zinaida Burskaya has to pay 10 thousand roubles (204,98 GBP). The statements in them will also have to be refuted in “Novaya Gazeta”.
The Department’s spokesperson Viktor Khrekov said he was satisfied with the court’s decisions.
The newspaper’s attorney Yaroslav Kozheurov, in his order, said he will appeal the court’s decision. He expressed confidence that in spite of the judge’s decision the facts mentioned in the articles were sufficiently proven in the court.
“But even such controversial proceedings are better than shooting journalists,” says Muratov. Two“Novaya Gazeta” journalists were assassinated in last five years: Anna Politkovskaya, Anastasia Baburova. “Defamation suits will remain a key factor in suppressing free speech as long as Vladimir Putin rules the country,” Muratov concluded.
Defamation decriminalised in Russia
The Russian State Duma has decriminalised defamation, having passed amendments to the Criminal Code.
There are two major legislative threats to freedom of expression in Russia: libel and antiextremism legislation. Both are frequently abused to silence journalists, bloggers, opposition leaders — anyone critical of government policy or of influential businessmen.
Libel legislation in Russia used to include two types of penalties: criminal and civil. They were specified in the articles 129 and 130 of the Criminal Code and article 152 of the Civil Code.
Article 129 of the Criminal Code described both slander (deliberately falsified information denigrating the honour and dignity of another person or undermining his reputation) and libel (the same, but published or broadcast in mass media, etc). It stipulated punishment by a fine, or compulsory work (for a term of 120 to 180 hours), or corrective labour (for a term up to two years), or restraint of liberty (for a term up to three years) or arrest (for a term of three to six months), or deprivation of liberty (much like arrest, normally longer and with less harsh conditions; for a term up to three years).
Article 130 of the Criminal Code talked about “denegration of the honour and dignity of another person, expressed in indecent form”. The insult is punishable by a fine, or by compulsory works (for a term of up to 180 hours), or by corrective labour (for a term of up to one year).
The article 152 of the Civil Code — “Protection of the Honour, Dignity and Business Reputation” specified the citizen’s right to claim through court the information he considered discrediting be refuted, unless the one who spread it proved it was true. The citizen also has the right to claim compensation of the losses and the moral damage.
Before the amendments become operative one still has the right to file two defamation suits at a time: a criminal and a civil one. According to Russian law, the failure in civil proceedings on defamation doesn’t affect one’s rights to carry on criminal proceedings. This is often misused by those who fight freedom of expression advocates in Russia: criminal investigation they seek is apt to include confiscation of journalists’ data carriers.
The other amendment lawmakers passed concerned threats and violence against journalists and demanding journalists’ equipment. These crimes will be punished by a prison term of up to six years or corrective labour for a term of five years.
Together with defamation decriminalisation, this amendment was hailed by many human rights activists in and outside Russia. Still some scepticism remains: amendments don’t eradicate corruption in Russian judicial and law enforcement system, which doesn’t guarantee that journalists will not be persecuted, beaten and killed. Particularly it doesn’t assure that murders and assaults of journalists which took place in post-Soviet Russia will be finally investigated into, rights activists say. Anna Politkovskaya’s murderers, or people who almost beat Mikhail Beketov and Oleg Kashin to death, have not yet been identified, let alone punished.
Syrians want freedom
Dear Anna Politkovskaya,
I am well aware that this honor, which bears your name, is not merely awarded to me personally but rather to the sons and daughters of Syria, and the 3,000 whose blood was spilled over the past 7 months by the same criminal exclusionary mentality that spilled your own blood.
I am aware that your passion for truth and the defense of human dignity, for which you gave your life, is but a link in a chain that stretches across the world, through individuals and entire peoples, all of whom believe in everyone’s right to live free of oppression, humiliation, and subjugation.
Nonetheless, bestowing this honor on me personally out of all other Syrians assumes another dimension, as it comes on the fifth anniversary of your death. It means a lot to me to receive an award in your name, Anna, as a Russian citizen — even as the Russian government continues to support the Syrian regime, which has been committing crimes against humanity for several months now; crimes that have been documented by international human rights organizations.
This vividly exemplifies that what we share in humanity transcends languages, nationalities, and borders, just as tyranny and corruption share the same essence although they differ in details.
For this very reason I believe the battle for freedom, being fought by Syrians for months now, would bring comfort to your soul: because each step forward towards peace and justice in any part of the world benefits all humanity.
I am aware, Anna, that it would have hurt you deeply to see the passage that my country is going through to rid herself of a regime that perfected criminal behavior for several decades. Under this regime tens of thousands have perished in the dark dungeons of its security apparatus, or died in massacres and were buried in mass graves. Hundreds of thousands have suffered the silent and lonely years of detention, forced to express and recite phrases of false loyalty to their hangman, day in and day out. And after all this, the regime was inherited, like a royal heirloom, from father to son, in an act unprecedented in a republic. All this occurred amidst deafening Arab and international silence, and a level of complicity rarely seen before.
The oppressed people, meanwhile, were blamed for the crimes of the tyrant.
When the Syrian people decided last March to tear down the wall of fear and stand up against the violence and humiliation imposed on them by the security apparatus, they did it alone. They did it bearing nothing but the scent of freedom that breezed from Tunisia and Egypt, and the vision of a new homeland that does not steal their being, their future, and the dreams of their children.
Since then the security apparatus has been killing unarmed civilians, whose commitment to peaceful protest has stunned the world for months. As of today, according to the Center for the Documentation of Violations in Syria, there have been 3,031 martyrs, including 192 children and 85 women and girls. These figures do not represent the actual number of martyrs, as we continue to discover mass graves and learn of the disappearance of thousands of prisoners of this revolution.
Tanks have besieged our cities and towns, military forces have bombed homes, and tortured dozens of people to death, disfiguring them and stealing their organs. Hamzeh al-Khatib, the 13-year-old boy, who was arrested, whose dead body was savaged, and whose genitals were mutilated, was but one of many similar cases.
Peaceful protesters have been arrested and killed in cold blood. Ghiath Matar, the non-violent activist, a young man of 26, died under torture 3 days after his arrest. The regime offered him death after he offered them roses and water in one of the demonstrations he was leading.
Family members of activists have been kidnapped, tortured, and executed as a form of punishment — and no one is excluded. Zeynab Al-Husni, 19 years old, served as an example of what might befall the families of activists and protesters: she was kidnapped by the security forces, tortured and killed a few days after they murdered her activist brother.
Security forces carry out mass executions day after day, we find new bodies buried in unmarked graves.
Just as we are proud, dear Anna, that you found loyal friends who kept your name alive to remind us of who you were, and what you sacrificed for the sake of truth and human rights, I wish I could recite the names of all our martyrs, one by one. And I wish I could recite the names of the tens of thousands who were, and continue to be, subject to arrest and torture.
All of them: children, women, young men, and the elderly, they all deserve to have their names honored and immortalized. For they have opened the door to freedom. They have opened a door that was closed for decades, so that we might follow them on the road ahead together and behind them.
And I would like to remind the world that the Syrian people, who were victims to all those crimes yet still patient and persistent, are people who deserve much more than complicit silence, or timid criticism from those who have failed to refer this regime to the International Criminal Court despite acknowledging its crimes.
All those activists, some of whom we know and others that we don’t, are creating a new history for their country and their region. They are creating a homeland and a future from the ashes of the violence carried out by one of the most notorious authoritarian regimes in the world.
And so, Anna Politkovskaya, we continue. We continue in your memory, and in the memory of all the other symbols of truth and freedom in the world, until freedom, justice, and democracy prevail in our Syria and the entire world.
Razan Zaitouneh is the winner of the RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award 2011.