Each week, Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. Here are recent reports that give us cause for concern.
Nikolay Andruschenko, an investigative correspondent for weekly newspaper Novyi Petersburg died on 19 April after being subjected to two brutal assaults in March, Open Russia reported. Alevtina Ageyeva, the director of Novyi Peterburg, told Mapping Media Freedom that on 9 March, two unknown individuals approached him near his house and demanded that he hand over documents and materials relating to an ongoing investigation into abuse of power by police officers.
When Andruschenko refused to cooperate, they hit him several times in the head and ran away. The journalist refused to file a complaint to the police.
The second assault took place a few days later. According to Ageyeva, she was called by the Mariinskaya hospital and told that Nikolay Andruschenko was in a critical state and being treated in the intensive care unit. He was found unconscious with a brain injury near his apartment.
Despite undergoing surgery he never recovered.
Although the local police have opened an investigation, Ageyeva doubts it will be conducted properly because of Andruschenko’s history of investigating cases of police corruption.
She is convinced that both assaults are related to Andruschenkov’s work as an investigative reporter.
Two reporters for Buzzfeed News, David Perrotin and Paul Aveline, were physically prevented filming a meeting with French presidential candidate Francois Fillon on 17 April. The journalists were filming two people who had interrupted Fillon’s meeting by shouting “Give the money back!” and were detained by the police when members of the candidate’s security staff physically prevented them from filming. Guards first grabbed David Perrotin, pulling him by the collar, physically threatened him and demanded that he delete his video. A fuard then grabbed Aveline’s phone to prevent him from filming the scene. At this point, according to Buzzfeed, a member of Fillon team said: “Throw them out.” It was only when the two journalists said they would write an article on the incidents that the members of the security team stopped threatening them.
During the same meeting, journalist Hortense Gerard, who works for BFMTV, was spat on. She later tweeteda photo of her sleeve covered in spit.
Independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta has received “direct threats addressed to its journalists” following publications on harassment of gay people in Chechnya according to a statementthey released.
It says: “On 1 April 2017, Novaya Gazeta wrote on mass detainment and torture of Chechen residents who were suspected of being homosexual. We know the names of three persons murdered and we know that the number of those who were killed is much higher.(…)”
The backlash in Chechnya has left the entire staff of the newspaper fearful, the Guardian reported.
According to official data, on 3 April around 15,000 people attended an urgent meeting of representatives from the republic’s Muslim communities in the central mosque in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.
During the meeting, Adam Shakhidov, an adviser to the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, publicly accused the editorial staff of Novaya Gazeta of defamation and called them “enemies of our religion and our motherland”. This was broadcast live by a local TV channel and led to aggressive comments on social media.
After the meeting, a resolution was accepted. The second paragraph states the following: “The centuries-old traditions of Chechen society, the dignity of Chechen men, and our faith have all been insulted, and we promise that those behind it will face reprisals, whoever they are and wherever they are.”
Novaya Gazeta has called on the Russian authorities to prevent the hate speech directed at journalists for doing their jobs. When Novaya Gazeta’s statement was published online, its website crashed and staff are convinced this was due to a DDoS attack.
The backlash was sparked by an 1 April story from reporter Elena Milashina and her colleague Irina Gordienko. In March, Milashina had discovered evidence that gay men were being detained, tortured and even killed in an anti-homosexual purge in Chechnya.
Milashina spoketo The Washington Post on Friday 14 April from an undisclosed location and said she was thinking of leaving the country because of safety concerns.
Unidentified assailants shot at journalists from investigative program Slidstvo.Info on 14 April. The journalists were filming the estate of oligarch Rinat Akhmetov around Kyiv, the Institute of Mass Information reported.
“Our reporters Maxim Opanasenko and Kirill Shapar were filming a new estate near Kyiv which belongs to Rinat Akhmetov,” Slidstvo.Info reported.
Unidentified individuals shot a meter and a half above the car where Slidstvo.Info journalists were seated, Maxim Opanasenko told IMI. “I didn’t see the gunman. We suspect this was intended to scare us because they saw our drone,” the journalist said.
He added that the journalists are planning to investigate who the shooters were. No journalists were injured according to the IMI report.
Journalist and publisher Kostas Vaxevanis was arrested following a libel lawsuit against him filed by Lina Nikolopoulou, who is married to Bank of Greece Governor Yiannis Stournaras, Naftemporiki newspaper reported.
On 9 April Vaxevanis published an article in the weekly newspaper Documento about Nikolopoulou, who he claimed had received up to €400,000 of state money for medical and pharmaceutical lobbying and conference work and Stournaras presence in these conferences as a lecturer.
Vaxevanis alleges that contracts for these services were awarded to Nikolopoulou without being offered for public tender.
“The Stournaras family is not struggling in a legal battle, as it pretends. Mr and Mrs Stournaras struggle for their survival. They are trying to cover the way they act and operate,” Vaxevanis wrote in a statement asking for support.
The party leading the Greek government, Syriza, issued a statement stressing that the lawsuit “directly challenges journalism and press freedom” and adding that “the report raises some critical questions about the public health area, which require serious and documented answers”.
Vaxevanis was released later the same day. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Click on the bubbles to view reports or double-click to zoom in on specific regions. The full site can be accessed at https://mappingmediafreedom.org/[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1493112590515-3ca2c0ad-ff59-8″ taxonomies=”6564″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”88437″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Doughty Street Chambers and Index on Censorship invite you to a breakfast talk on Tuesday 18 April with guest speakers Ildar Dadin and his wife Anastasia Zotova.
Dadin is a well known Russian opposition and LGBT rights activist, and is the only person to have been convicted under a 2014 law which seeks to crush protest. For a series of one-man pickets, often silent, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment notwithstanding that the prosecutor sought a shorter sentence, and that before the anti-protest law was enacted a sentence for such activity would have been limited to a fine or a suspended sentence. Dadin will speak about his time in Russian prison colonies, including the torture he and other prisoners suffered until he was unexpectedly released in February of this year. He will also speak about the horrific news coming from Chechnya in recent days of state-sanctioned violence against gay men, and the difficulty in getting information on these abuses to the world because of Russia’s severe restrictions on press freedom and journalists.
Dadin will be speaking via video-link. Despite the sudden and unexpected quashing of his conviction in February, he remains subject to a travel ban preventing him from leaving Russia. Even though Article 27.2 of the Russian Constitution states “Everyone may freely leave the Russian Federation. Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to freely return to the Russian Federation”, the number of Russian citizens prevented from leaving the country on the orders of the Kremlin is rising year on year.
The session, chaired by Russia expert and Doughty Street barrister Malcolm Hawkes, will conclude with a discussion of the action that lawyers and others can take to support Dadin and others in Russia who seek to promote free expression and a free press, and who need help to challenge travel bans, so that they can convey information to the world of State sponsored abuses of civil liberties and human rights.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
When: Tuesday 18 April, 8:30-9:30am
Where: Doughty Street Chambers, 53-54 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LS
Tickets: Free. RSVP to [email protected]
Ildar Dadin is a Russian human rights activist who was the first, and remains the only, person to be convicted under a notorious 2014 public assembly law aimed at quashing protest. For his one-man demonstrations, Dadin – a nominee for this year’s Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards – was sentenced, in 2015, to three years in prison, where he was tortured. Despite the sudden and unexpected quashing of his conviction in February of this year, Dadin remains subject to a travel ban which prevents him from leaving Russia. As a result, he is unable to join us in person.
The Henry Jackson Society, in association with Index on Censorship, is pleased to invite you to an event with Anastasia Zotova, Human rights activist and wife of Ildar Dadin. She has worked closely with him throughout his incarceration, fought for his release and has since campaigned alongside him. She will join us to shed a timely light on the increasingly dangerous environment for dissenters in Russia, the appalling conditions faced by Russia’s prisoners, and the future for political opposition in the country.
Anastasia Zotova is a journalist, human rights campaigner and wife of Russian political activist Ildar Dadin. Zotova, a daughter of two Putin supporters, first met Dadin whilst working as a journalist covering his protests. When he was imprisoned, she decided to marry Dadin, allowing the couple to maintain contact. Zotova subsequently worked to protect and defend her husband, using her position to fight for his release, speak out against the torture he and fellow inmates were facing and draw attention to wider Russian human rights abuses. With Dadin now facing a travel ban, she is an important international advocate.
Ildar Dadin is a Russian opposition activist. He was the first, and remains the only, person to be convicted under a notorious 2014 public assembly law. Dadin was arrested and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in December 2015. In November 2016, website Meduza published a letter smuggled from Dadin to his wife, exposing torture he claimed he was suffering alongside fellow prisoners. The letter, a brave move for a serving prisoner, was widely reported. A government investigation was prompted, and Dadin was transferred – against his will – to a Siberian prison colony. In February 2017, Russia’s constitutional and Supreme Courts suddenly quashed Dadin’s conviction, ruling he should be released and afforded opportunity for rehabilitation.
When feminist punk group Pussy Riot staged a protest performance on the altar of the Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on 21 February 2012, Russia’s government set in motion legislation that would severely punish blasphemy and drastically change relations between the country’s believers and non-believers.
Pussy Riot launched the performance to highlight the Russian Orthodox Church’s support for Vladimir Putin’s 2012 election and the ongoing collaboration between church and state. But Russia’s religious community took offence, calling the protest blasphemous and demanding action from prosecutors.
Within days, police arrested three of the group’s members. Later that year they were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and sentenced to two years in prison.
In June 2013, following the Pussy Riot case, new legal amendments to toughen punishment for blasphemy were enacted. The new Federal Law on Countering Insulting Religious Beliefs and Feelings of Citizens introduced changes into Article 148, “Obstructing the exercise of the right to freedom of conscience and religious belief,” of the Criminal Code. The new edition of the article included criminal liability for “public actions expressing obvious disrespect to society and committed with a view to insulting religious feelings of believers”, and for actions committed “in places specially designed for worship, other religious rites and ceremonies”.
The punishments vary from fines of up to 500,000 rubles (€8,000), compulsory labour and imprisonment for up to three years.
However, despite demands by a large part of society to toughen punishments for blasphemy, monitoring of trials involving Article 148 for the last three-and-a-half years has demonstrated its uselessness.
According to the report “Unlawful Implementation of the Anti-Extremist Legislation” by SOVA, a Moscow-based analytical centre studying relations between churches and secular society, only six sentences under the revised Article 148 were registered since 2013.
Aleksandr Verkhovski of SOVA told Index on Censorship that there will be no more in the future: “There’s no reason to use this article unless there is a new ideological mobilisation like in 2012 [with Pussy Riot].” Verkhovski said the blasphemy article does not work because the judiciary has been for years using Article 282 (incitement to racial, national or religious hatred and hostility) of the Criminal Code to prosecute offences of this nature.
According to SOVA, since 2007, Article 282 has been used in 1,477 cases. Not all of the cases are based on religious hatred, Article 282 has long been used to harassing opposition leaders, journalists and bloggers when they cover abuse of power by the state officials.
Articles 282 and 148, in addition to the Law on Countering Extremism, have been used to target a popular Moscow-based vlogger and comedian Ilia Davydov, known under the pseudonym Maddison. Davydov, who was named a hero of the Russian internet in 2009, became popular for his internet reviews and standup performances.
In January 2017, despite wide popularity, he suddenly deleted all his social media accounts and went into hiding. His disappearance from the internet was driven by accusations that he had insulted the “religious feelings of believers”. The uproar stemmed from a 2012 video in which he reportedly mocked both the Koran and the Bible. In the video, posted to YouTube, Maddison appeared with a book which he called “the Koran” and told a story about wanting to use it as toilet paper but opted for a sock instead. He then told his viewers it was actually the Bible, not the Koran. But then he opened the book to reveal that it was neither holy text.
The video on YouTube did not arouse much interest for three years. But in November 2016, Demand Knowledge, an Islamic Telegram channel geotagged in Chechnya, re-posted the video with a comment (in Russian): “An infidel is insulting Islam and Koran. If you find him, you know what to do.”
The video went viral and Maddison was inundated with abuses and death threats. In late January 2017 some Russian media outlets reported that a financial reward had been offered for reprisals against the comedian. Following the threats, Davydov left Russia.
The threats on his life were only part of the story. On 3 February 2017, the Prosecutor of the Republic of Chechnya appealed to a local court to prosecute Davydov. According to the Chechen Prosecutor’s Office, a review of the video and eight others on Davydov’s channel contain speech and actions that are humiliating to human dignity of Muslim and Christian believers. Prosecutors demanded the courtfile a criminal case under the Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code. The court is currently considering the request.
Davydov declined to speak to Index on Censorship stressing he does not give interviews to any media.
Maddison’s case is not isolated. Chechnya counts as one of the most closed and media-intolerant regions of Russia. Independent media and bloggers have been pushed out of the area in during the rise to power of the Chechen autocratic leader Ramzan Kadyrov. [/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”10″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1491398230204-8311d8c4-ec30-9″ taxonomies=”15″][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
