8 May 2007 | News
Freedom House’s annual report Freedom of the Press, released last month, caused an outcry over the state of local media in Russia. Freedom House, a leading American civil rights watch-dog, put Russia on 164th place among 195 countries, and named the country “Not Free”. International press-freedom groups supported this evaluation: according to New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists, Russia is the second most dangerous country for journalists; Reporters without borders say that this country is 147th among 168 states, in terms of press freedom.
On 3 May, Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO’s Director-General, accused Russian authorities for the growing number of journalists’ murders and impunity, in the conference speech in Medellin, Colombia. Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe released an accusatory statement on human rights suppression in Russia, highlighting the unsolved murder of the prominent journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
In response, the local officials and pro-Kremlin experts are persistently reminding that Russian journalists and authorities do not need any evaluation from the outside world to serve the public’s needs.
On the same day, Elena Zelinskaya, the vice-president of Media Union, (a Russian NGO uniting and supporting local media companies), and deputy chair at the Public Chamber’s Committee for Communications, Information Policies and Press Freedom, told the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy about a new project, Index of Press Freedom. The Russian Public Chamber and Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) will study the situation in the local media. The project participants are still to define the methods for this research, but Zelinskaya mentioned the economical level of each Russian region, the quality of journalists’ education, and regional practice of the rule of law as the criteria for such evaluation. ‘It seems to us that the evaluations that any foreign organization offers, are mostly based on the opinions… the experts’ views,’ Zelinskaya says. ‘We would like to use facts for our analysis. Our task is to understand what is going on in our country.’ According to Zelinskaya, the Public Chamber must ‘control’ press freedom in Russia, and the project aims to reveal the factors that influence freedom in media.
Anatly Kucherena, the chairman of Public Chamber’s Committee for Public Control over the law enforcement agencies, and the leader of Civil Society public movement, told Russian newspaper Kommersant daily that on Monday, May 7, he would send papers to Brussels for registering the new Association of human rights organisations. Human rights activists from Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, USA will participate in this association, which ‘will monitor civil freedoms in the West and prepare ratings, similar to those, where Russia is represented as an outsider.’
Denis Dragunsky, the editor of political journal Kosmopolis, says: ‘Russian press is obviously less free then in Finland and Sweden, for instance, but Russia is a European country, observing human rights and freedoms.’
Boris Reznik, the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee for Informational Policies, told the local media that he was sceptical ‘such ratings’. ‘It is not clear what criteria are used for these reports,’ Reznik said. ‘At the same time, we should recognize that we are not totally successful in press freedom development. But the question is whether the journalists themselves need freedom. Today many media companies refuse to be free voluntarily. It is easier for them to be obedient.’
The majority of Russian journalists though believe that the local media is heavily censored. The Guild of Press Publishers, a nonprofit partnership of Russian publishers of printed media and industry suppliers, conducted a survey titled Media Market and the Prospects of Civil Society in Russia, which showed that around 70% of Russian journalists recognize the fact of censorship of the local media. Initially, the research aimed to prove that since Perestroika (Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberal reforms) started, Russian media transformed from propaganda into the true reporting, but the polls do not support this hypothesis. Virtually all Russian journalists deny the existence of press freedom in Russia. As for the public, only 27% of Russian citizens trust local media.
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19 Apr 2007 | Comment, News
We are going to Moscow on Thursday evening. There are a few meetings arranged there. I could have gone at the very beginning of the week but was absolutely overloaded with the usual work in the office.
Stas [Stanislaw Mikhailovich] is thinking about whether to stay in Moscow through until Saturday to take part in the March of the Discontented. He is worried his participation might complicate his situation. He was detained in Gorky Square in Nizhny Novgorod during the March of March 24. They didn’t open a case into his alleged breach of the administrative law, for some reason. At the same time I feel that he has already made his choice and is morally ready to go further on. He demands that I leave Moscow on Friday evening. He feels that I will be of more help staying in Nizhny. I understand that his concerns about my safety are the only background of all this reasoning. OMON [the internal affairs ministry militia] in Nizhny demonstrated their readiness to follow whatever order they received.
We are taking the midnight train to Moscow. Our carriage is the last one. Some groups of passengers are shifting from one foot to another. Passing them, I recognize two familiar faces of the UBOP (special department on combating organized crime) servicemen. There is tension in the air as they watch us while we walk. Their chief, Maxim Bedyrev, rushes to us, saying:
‘Stanislaw, we would like to talk to you…’
‘What’s the reason? Any warrant?’
‘No, just let’s go aside and have a word.’
‘I don’t want to.’
We keep wrangling for a few minutes. Never forget to refer to Article 51 of the constitution: we have the right to remain silent. It’s clear that if we submit, the train will leave without us. Maxim squints at us. It is evident that he is furious and trying hard to hold his feelings.
‘Are you so sure that no accident will happen in your homes while you are away?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You should not be that sure. What if you have failed to switch off an iron?’
We can’t wait any longer – the train is leaving. As we get on, we hear Bedyrev call ‘Stanislaw Mikhailovich, are you aware what will happen if you dare to go to Pushkin Square on Saturday?’
***
We arrive at Kursky station, Moscow, at 6 am on Friday. As we are getting off the train, three policemen enter our carriage. One of them introduces himself and demands our documents. We are asked to follow them to the police station.
The office is full of policemen. One detained man is looking at us through the bars of the cage. Another detainee is sweeping the floor of the police office. When they hear that we work with the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation for Promoting Tolerance, they inquire what we mean by the word ‘tolerance’. The policemen treat us in a much more polite way after I receive a call from journalists from the Echo of Moscow radio station. I tell them, ‘Guys, you are in the news.’ While I am commenting on our problem in a live interview, a young investigator is filling in his report asking Stas the usual questions about any criminal convictions. He confirms the conviction he received for incitement to racial hatred after publishing an article by Chechen separatist Aslan Maskhadov.
They are evidently puzzled after our comprehensive explanation of what tolerance is.
‘And what? Are people already taken to jails for publishing Maskhadov in our country?’
I am amazed by the simplicity of his reaction. Maskhadov is not a notorious ‘terrorist’ in the perception of this particular police lieutenant. Our conversation is just friendly after that. We are told that we will be released in just five minutes. The policemen drop a few sarcastic remarks about their colleagues from Nizhny Novgorod and we leave.
***
10 am on Saturday morning. I am going to my friends’ office to drop my backpack there. I still hope that I will manage to leave Moscow in the evening. My train ticket to Nizhny Novgorod for the previous night was just wasted.
The first coincidence happens when Stas and I meet activist Marina Litvinovich. She is taking huge heaps of roses out of her car. They are planning to distribute copies of the constitution of the Russian Federation among young people. I get a bunch of roses to distribute among those who join the March. Stas takes some copies of the constitution.
***
11.30. While approaching Pushkin Square, we see huge numbers of OMON and military. I am going along Tverskaya Square with my bunch of roses. Reserved men in plain clothes with wires poking out of their ears are casting suspicious glances at me but don’t try to stop. They must be consulting with their chiefs as their lips keep moving whispering something into receivers. Pushkin Square is blocked off. All the area around the monument to Pushkin is crammed with people in blue uniforms. There are around a thousand of them there. The opposite side of the square is also cordoned off. People start to approach us as they see the roses and take them for some sign.
Just in the middle of Pushkin Square we bump into one of the Dutch journalists who were detained in Nizhny. Remke was beaten in Nizhny Novgorod by the OMON servicemen as he failed to understand how wide they wanted him to spread his legs. He has mended his torn leather overcoat by now. He is not shocked by the sight of numerous military trucks and heavily armed police force after what he observed in Nizhny Novgorod when the protesters were dispersed on March 24. But he is evidently shocked by the minimal response from his own government to the violation of the rights of citizens of the Netherlands at the demo. The so-called political interests and double-dealing diplomacy of political and economical interests is clouding the eyes of European politicians so much that they don’t want to make a notice of the growing danger posed by Putin. Our Dutch friend says, ‘I am just worn out and don’t want to be detained once again.’ But he is in the square now, and nobody knows how the situation is going to develop.
***
11.45 We are trying to find out where our friends are. Marina Litvinovich’s phone answers that we can find her in Tverskaya Street. We head towards her. We overhear two police colonels giving the order: ‘There is a group of about 50 people going towards the Square. Detain them all.’ In a few seconds we see this group. It is being led by Garry Kasparov. We join them trying to distribute the constitutions and roses among the people. The OMON blocks our way. We are standing face to face with them. Kasparov tries to persuade them to let us go on. One of the OMON people is making a nasty remark about Kasparov being a traitor. He calmly responds:
‘You don’t have the right to call me a traitor as when I was your age I was gaining recognition and honour for my country, while you are breaking its main law.’
People start to shout out, ‘Give way!’ We are being supported from behind the chain of the OMON. It is they who are surrounded by people. People are protruding their hands over the hard-helmeted heads of the OMON. Then the slogan changes: ‘Russia without Putin!’ Immediately the OMON chiefs give the order to detain people. We try to escape through the open doors of some cafés and shops. The OMON grab an elderly woman who is clutching a lamppost. She squeals ‘They are killing me’, while three huge men are trying to tear her off the pole. I see Stas being dragged into the bus. He is screaming, ‘Let me go.’ Several men are trying to hold him and he is being dragged in opposite directions. People on the right and on the left of me are just disappearing one by one. The bus is crowded with people. Some OMON servicemen are taking Kasparov from a café.
***
I am looking around trying to calm down. We have to decide what to do next. I recognise a man in a blue windbreaker. It is Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin adviser, now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in the US.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘We should try to get to Turgenev Square and take people from here.’
He is right. The authorized rally is going to start in under an hour in Turgenev Square. It is absolutely pointless to wait in Tverskaya Street until we are also loaded onto the buses.
We are going down the underground path. There are some journalists who recognize Illarionov. The flashes of their cameras attract people’s attention. When we get out, some 50 people are following us.
Andrey and I are getting close to the police cordon to find out what is going on in the buses with the detained people. I see Kasparov’s face through the broken window of a bus. Some minutes before that a young man broke it from the inside and escaped. Again we come face to face with the OMON. A CNN journalist is interviewing Illarionov. There are instigators in the crowd. One of them is screaming, pointing his finger at Illarionov, ‘What are you waiting for? Kick him with your baton at his head. Don’t beat Russians. Fracture the head of this American vermin. What are you doing here? Aren’t you still in Washington?’ Andrey ignores him. An OMON chief shoulders his way through the crowd. He tries to grab Andrey, but the people don’t let him.
We decide to go to Turgenev Square, taking a route that goes from the office of the Izvestia newspaper in the opposite direction to Pushkin Square. The OMON and the military bosses won’t expect us to take this route. Nastasyinskiy Lane is empty. The way is free. We call our friends, trying to find them and get them to join us. I get a text message from my friend Ilya, ‘I have been detained. We tried to break through the OMON cordon. People say that 1,000 people are marching to the Sadovoye Koltso.’ It is our column Ilya’s heard about.
Banners are unfolded. The red, white and blue banners of the Russian Federation fly over our heads. People shout: ‘Russia without Putin!’; ‘We want other Russia’; ‘No to a police state’. There are no obstacles in our way. We approach a Russian Orthodox church where we see people on the belfry. When we come alongside the church, they start ringing the bells, expressing their support. We feel free and cheered up. Stas calls me from a police station. I tell that the March is making its way. I hear him relaying the news to Kasparov.
As the march reaches Petrovka, 38, the famous address of the criminal police, people start singing, ‘Our proud Varyag is not going to give up’, a song of undefeated Russian sailors from the time of the Russian-Japanese war of 1905. We are also shouting, ‘No to the state with the FSB everywhere.’
In Trubnaya we see several hundred people more. Our two columns flow together.
The OMON chiefs have sent their watchdogs to stop us. They appear from Sretenskiy Avenue. Andrey is next to me. Marina Litvinovich is marching shoulder to shoulder to Ruslan Kutaev, a Chechen businessman and politician who was the co-chair of our Russian-Chechen Friendship Society for the first few years. Andrey is pulling me by a sleeve, telling me it’s time to run. I understand that he wants to pass the narrow street where the OMON is running to before they close their ranks.
We fail and run into the shields of the OMON. Andrey is telling them to let people go on. He keeps repeating, ‘This is our city’. Pointless. He pulls me out of the crowd just at the moment the OMON begin to detain people. We run over the OMON chain and jump over a fence. Many people escape with us. Hundreds of others keep running towards the Sretenskaya Square. Another OMON cordon. This time they are just chasing people as the column has already been dispersed. We see them dragging people, like sacks of flour, into their cars. We see them beating people with their batons.
Two OMON servicemen try to seize a young man who was marching next to us. Andrey and I run up to them and try to talk them into not detaining him. It is useless. They are hunters and the young boy is their prey. One of them is threatening us with his baton. Andrey tries to protect me. Suddenly, I feel an acute pain in my ankle. It is not a baton – it is the heavy boot of a policeman who is kicking my leg. As I limp aside, I see Litvinovich being chased by some other OMON militiamen.
***
Several hundred manage to get to Turgenev Square. The rally is underway. We have to go through the metal detectors. Policemen are searching Illarionov. There are several books in his inner pocket.
‘What are they?’
‘These are very interesting books…. This one is the constitution of the Russian Federation. The other one is the Criminal Code.’
They let us go through. Former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov is behind us. His face is red. He also had problems getting to the site as the OMON tried to detain him on the way. They failed. Andrey Illarionov refuses to make speeches although he is the person who has become de facto leader. Political satirist Viktor Shenderovich is making a speech. It is difficult to make out how many people have managed to get together here. Not less than 2,000. I am told that Putin has left Moscow for Saint Petersburg.
***
It’s time for the rally to finish. Marina and I decide to go to Presnenskiy police station, where the first detainees have been taken. Stas is among them with Garry Kasparov, and a range of activists, reporters and ordinary protestors.
There is already a crowd in front of the police station. I see Vladimir Ryzhkov, a member of the State Duma whose Republican Party of Russia is likely to be liquidated soon. He tells that some hundred members of the party participated in the rally. He has just seen the detained people. There are two lawyers with them: Karinna Moskalenko and Elena Liptzer. I again meet Andrey Illarionov. He has also come to support the friends. People from the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Demos Center are here. My friend Alik Mnatskanyan calls my cell phone. I see him standing on the steps of the police station. He is working as a journalist taking pictures. Nina Tagankina of the Moscow Helsinki group shows me a torn copy of the constitution. She picked it up in Tverskaya after the dispersal.
‘It would be one of the main exhibits in future. The constitution trampled by the OMON.’
I want to say that human rights defenders should do more than just pick up ‘exhibits’ after the events. But Nina’s eyes are shining with joy and I don’t want to upset her. She is here with all the people. And that’s important.
But time is passing. The prisoners have been detained for more than three hours now. The crowd of people is shouting ‘Freedom to political prisoners.’ We try to express our support, shouting out the names of the detainees. The site is surrounded with five-storey apartment buildings. Their residents are getting out onto their balconies and express their support to us.
The chief of the police station comes out with a megaphone. He is being followed by an OMON lieutenant-colonel. The pale-faced police chief is trying to persuade the crowd to disperse, but his voice is trembling. Andrey approaches him. He is very calm and reserved. He explains that it is better to release all the detained people as their custody has become unlawful. In response, the police chief murmurs, ‘The OMON isn’t following our orders. Somebody else operates them.’
The whole area is surrounded by the OMON again. Huge trucks can be seen on the main road. They don’t let people get past their cordons. Then the violence starts again. OMON beats people, seizes them and drags them to their buses.
We count our ‘casualties’. Eighteen people have been taken away this time.
Stas appears on the staircase. He is standing smoking. Then he comes towards us. Nobody is trying to stop him. The OMON has left and these policemen are sick and tired of the whole thing. He shows us the report on his ‘breach’ of the administrative law. It says: ‘Was detained while shouting out anti-governmental slogans in a big crowd of people.’ However, there are evident breaches in the report. No name and no signature of the person who made the ruling. No time of detention is indicated. This should mean it can be appealed.
We go to Amnesty International’s office. My foot is aching, and it is difficult to walk. I probably need to go to hospital. My friend who works with Amnesty is trying to get the address of the nearest hospital with a trauma surgery office. Failed, failed, failed…. She groans, ‘It is a disaster to fall ill in Russia.’ Yes, it is. At the same time, I’m trying to get the contact details of lawyers, as we keep receiving calls from Marina Litvinovich about violations of rights of many people who have been taken to other police stations. She is still in Novaya Square at the court building, waiting for Kasparov and the rest.
On the way to hospital Friederike is making phone calls to the most troublesome police stations. They respond as some minutes later we begin to receive calls that detainees there have not been so maltreated. It does help as these guys still don’t like international attention. They are dreaming about escaping their reality for good. Certainly, they won’t be able to afford Kurshavel, the resort of choice of the oligarchs.
I talk to Andrey Illarionov on the phone. He is going to be my witness. I really am going to report the trauma of being kicked. It will be pointless but I will do it.
In hospital we are not very welcome. They are evidently not going to provide me with help. I have no registration in Moscow. I have left my Russian passport in the office. I have to beg the doctor. She does me a favour in the long run but it takes me 200 rubles. No fracture, fortunately, but the foot is swollen. As I am leaving, she tells me that I was the 54th patient she’d seen from the demonstration.
When I get to Nizhny and wake up after a half-a-day’s heavy sleep, I turn on TV to learn that Putin has spent the weekend in St Petersburg in the company of Jean Claude Van Damme. Putin in a black shirt, with radiantly-smiling van Damme, is watching no-holds barred fighting. The white marble of Van Damms’s teeth looks even brighter against the background of Putin’s black shirt and pale face.
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5 Apr 2007 | Uncategorized
On 4 November 2005, more than 3,000 activists of nationalist organisations, making Nazi salutes and with stylised swastikas on their banners, marched through the centre of Moscow to Slavianskaia Square between the Kremlin and the headquarters of the FSB (KGB). If the aims of the marchers had not been clear enough from the line of drummers and young people wearing quasi-military uniform, they were soon evident from their slogans: ‘Sieg Heil!’, ‘Hail Russia’, ‘Russia for the Russians’, ‘Who owns Russia? – Russians!’, ‘Russia is All, All Else is Nothing!’
The organisers of the march had been given official permission for the demonstration. Several radical nationalist and fascist organisations, including the skinheads’ movement, made no secret of the fact that their main aim was to drive all ‘non-Russians’ out of Moscow. Anti-Semitic utterances were also to be heard at the meeting.
On that same day, 4 November, the traditional ‘grey briefing’ took place in the Kremlin for the directors of federal television companies, at which officials of the administration of the President of Russia distributed a ‘list of terminology’. The document advises against ‘distorting’ the Russian language and the employment of ‘correct terminology’ in television news programmes.
The enemy were no longer to be described as separatists, but always as Chechen terrorists or at Chechen fighters; their actions were not to be described as military operations, but as terrorist actions or outrages, and so on. At first sight, these events seem unrelated, but there is one very important detail to note: not one of the nationwide federal television stations screened a report on the march of the nationalists and fascists. In all likelihood, that decision was taken that same day in the Kremlin.
The fourth of November started a new page in the history of Russia: the rebirth of nationalism. This rebirth was initiated by the government, beginning in 2000, after both personnel changes in the Kremlin administration and the revival of the traditions of Soviet propaganda and xenophobia became a component of official and unofficial ideology.
It is manifest in the colourful expressions frequently used by Vladimir Putin, for example: ‘beat the crap out [of the Chechen resistance] in the shithouse’; or about men becoming ‘circumcised radical Muslims’. Xenophobia is endemic both among the leaders of political parties ideologically close to the Russian government and among those that comprise its opposition.
Russian xenophobia has gradually evolved from being anti-Semitic into being anti-Caucasian and anti-Islamic. The development of xenophobia is encouraged, not only by the public speeches and acts of politicians, but also by the mass media: the state-owned media because it is obliged to broadcast the comments of politicians, and the non-state-owned media because it reflects the general nationalistic mood of society.
Only a small proportion of the liberally minded mass media resists the spread of xenophobia. Unfortunately, the influence of a few Moscow newspapers and a few dozen provincial newspapers cannot significantly alter the situation.
Neither can the Internet, despite being completely uncontrolled by the government. The freedom of the Internet has made possible not only the uncontrolled delivery of alternative news, but also the appearance of a large number of nationalistic and fascist websites.
There are several reasons for this reappearance of Russian xenophobia. Researchers usually link Putin’s coming to power with the renewed outbreak of the war in Chechnya: the population wanted to see someone with a firm hand in the Kremlin. This is entirely plausible, because many Russian opinion polls in the late 1990s, the last two or three years of Boris Yeltsin’s rule, pointed to disillusionment after the first war in Chechnya ended in 1996. Many described the peace treaty with the Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov as a ‘shameful defeat’.
The ‘news war’ against Chechnya intensified immediately after the signing of the peace treaty in 1996, and the Russian state-owned mass media increasingly began to refer to ‘Chechen bandits’ and ‘Chechen terrorists’. During this period, however, the independent television company NTV was still functioning, and the Echo of Moscow radio station was developing.
The Internet had become widespread and independent newspapers were being published. It was possible to discuss and debate the problem of Chechnya. The levels of xenophobia in the mass media could be seen as a manifestation of popular nationalism unrelated to government policy. Only radical politicians and the military claimed that the only way they could resolve the Chechen problem was by means of military force.
This situation began to change in August 1999 after the Russian army’s campaign in Dagestan, a federal republic adjacent to Chechnya where Chechen and Dagestani separatists were organising resistance. This was the first military operation conducted under a news blackout. Almost nothing was known about it, because journalists were stopped at the approaches to Dagestan. Only a few journalists working for independent publications managed to report on the operation and its consequences, and their information differed markedly from officially approved news.
Almost as soon as Putin was appointed prime minister in August 1999, he started to woo journalists. Newspaper editors and the directors of television companies began to receive frequent invitations to the Kremlin. After the first few such meetings, a number of heads of independent newspapers began to publish commentaries on their conversations with Putin. When Putin was elected President in March 2000, he continued to socialise with the heads of the mass media, but in recent years only ‘reliable’ journalists, who keep their mouths shut and don’t give away secrets, are invited to the Kremlin.
When two blocks of flats were blown up in Moscow in September 1999, there was no investigative journalism from the Russian media. Within a few hours, all the television channels were broadcasting interviews with politicians who spoke of ‘clear signs of Chechen involvement’, but since then, neither the official enquiry nor any other investigation has come up with evidence to suggest the leadership of the Chechen republic was involved . In spite of this, the television channels did what the government needed them to do: they created a public consensus on who was behind the Moscow atrocities.
The Kremlin’s policy on news was finalised when, in September 2000, Putin signed a strange document titled ‘Doctrine of Information Security’. This is neither a law nor a legally binding document, but is rather a government action programme. The Doctrine refers to the leading role of the state press and makes mention, several times more often than it mentions freedom of speech, of ‘news war’ and the ‘news weapon’.
The provision of news in Russia began to change from 2000 as persecution of the independent television company NTV and of journalists on independent newspapers began; this was accompanied by the creation of new state-owned television companies, newspapers, agencies and websites. Government bureaucrats began routinely to bandy about a new concept, ‘unified news provision’ which, on closer inspection, proves to be none other than the familiar Soviet concept of propaganda.
The main aim has been achieved: Russian society now hears what is going on in Chechnya only from official sources. The government has introduced rigorous controls on Russian journalists, restricting visits to territory where the so-called ‘anti-terrorist operation’ is being conducted, that is, to Chechnya. Similar controls have been applied to foreign journalists.
Journalists who wrote extensively about the First Chechen War have been neutralised by being refused visas and accreditation by the Russian ministry of foreign affairs.
News about events of any description in Russia is now strictly controlled by the government: all the national television companies and radio stations are state-owned. Only a small proportion of news sources, newspapers and the Internet are in a position to deliver alternative news, and their influence on public opinion does not compare with that of radio and TV.
The essential conditions for spreading the language of enmity have been created in Russia. Television is free: it is financed out of the state budget and by advertising revenue. Anybody living in Russia has only to press the button on their remote control to access five national channels, only one of which is dedicated to culture, while the others include news bulletins or news analysis.
There is at present no public service television network in Russia and, to judge by the Duma’s postponement of discussion of the legislative proposal, there is unlikely to be one in the near future. Public control of the programming of television companies would be detrimental to the government, since the Kremlin would lose its principal disseminator of propaganda.
Only subscribers to cable television packages can access non-official news from Euronews, BBC or CNN programmes translated into Russian. In 2002, however, there were only 12 million users of cable networks in Russia out of a population of 145 million. Accordingly, more than 90 per cent of the population is dependent on news from programmes broadcast by state television.
The independent television companies in the Russian provinces have their own news and news analysis programmes, but are subjected to pressure by the local authorities. For the most part, they try to avoid dealing with topics which might cause trouble.
The situation with radio is much the same. The only independent news radio station is Moscow Echo, which is able to rebroadcast its programmes in 41 Russian cities. This gives it a potential audience of 22,400,000, but obviously not all of them listen to the station’s programmes. Probably, as in Moscow, only 8 per cent to 9 per cent tune in. The other independent radio stations (of which there are about 1,000) broadcast music and devote 3-6 minutes in the hour to news. Foreign radio stations broadcasting in Russian – Radio Liberty, the BBC, Deutsche Welle – continue to have a modest following.
The other source of news is, of course newspapers. Traditionally those published in Moscow are considered the most liberal, but their circulations are not large enough to sway public opinion in Russia as a whole.
Of course, several dozen liberal newspapers are published in the provinces, but the standard of living and hence the purchasing power of the population is lower than in Moscow, in consequence, the print run of these newspapers is several times less than those in the capital.
The government is unwilling to give up its control of television since TV news bulletins and news analysis programmes are crucial in forming public opinion. Statistics for February 2004 on the database of the Public Opinion Institute (Fond Obshchestvennoe mnenie), reveal that ORT (the First Channel) is received by 95 per cent of the survey’s respondents, RTR (the Rossiya Channel) by 93 per cent. The figures for the remaining television companies are much lower: NTV 69 per cent; TVTs 48 per cent.
The only area of news provision over which the government has no control is the Internet. As yet there is no law in Russia regulating Internet activity and no statutory obligation to register websites. A large number of nationalist and fascist websites have been created on the Russian Internet (RuNet). Almost every organisation preaching racial or national hatred and intolerance has its own website. RuNet is developing rapidly and is used by 10 per cent to12 per cent of the population, but only a small number of users appear interested in political information.
Russian legislation makes it an offence to publish materials instigating or aggravating national and religious discord. Russia also has a Public Prosecutor’s Office whose job it is to monitor the observance of laws and punish those who flout them. Despite this, hundreds of newspapers daily publish articles whose xenophobic content falls within the provisions of these articles of the Criminal Code: it is extremely rare for cases to be brought on these grounds. The courts deal leniently with those accused of distributing jingoistic publications.
Xenophobic materials are to be found not only in nationalistic publications, but primarily in the popular press, in newspapers like Komsomolskaya Pravda and Moskovsky Komsomolets with huge circulations of 2-3 million. It is clear that anti-Chechen xenophobia has been whipped up by the authorities, both military and political, who are eager to ensure that society continues to believe in the necessity of the military campaign in Chechnya.
The state’s bureaucrats did use propaganda during the First Chechen War, but from the beginning of the Second Chechen War all rhyme and reason disappeared from the news they distributed. Official sources appeared totally unconcerned whether the news they were releasing was subsequently discredited, or was seen to be totally ridiculous, even by those without specialist military knowledge.
For example, on 6 October 1999, the ITAR-TASS news agency, quoting one of the leaders of the North Caucasus Military District, announced: ‘The Chechen bandits are themselves mining residential blocks and, when federal aircraft appear in the sky, blow them up. This is being done in order to turn the Chechen population against the actions of the federal authorities in the northern Caucasus. At the same time, military sources state that the civilian population is being increasingly disaffected by the actions of the bandit formations.’
Hatred of Chechens is always encouraged, in particular by the Russian military, whose press centres disseminate absurd ‘news’. For example, after the Kursk submarine disaster in 2002, ITAR-TASS, citing an anonymous FSB officer, reported that Chechens were planning to hijack a submarine. A year earlier, the intelligence services disseminated a story that the blueprint had been discovered in a cave in the mountains of Chechnya of a Boeing similar to one used by terrorists to destroy buildings in New York on 11 September 2001.
Anti-Chechen propaganda is spread not only via news or news analysis programmes. In the last five years, Russian television channels have shown a large number of feature films in which, as in Indian cinema, the heroes, their characteristics and the ending are already familiar to the audience. These are films about the Chechen war, in which the good guys are invariably Russian soldiers and officers and the bad guys are Chechens or, more generally, Caucasians.
State control of the mass media is the principal cause of the growth of xenophobia in Russia, with television the main ‘weapon’ in the armoury of Russian state propaganda.
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24 Jan 2007 | News
The 23 january decision came despite a campaign by human rights organizations, prominent European politicians, and intellectuals such as Bernard Henri Levy and Noam Chomsky. “Today’s decision delivers a double blow – one to freedom of expression and another to civil society,” said Nicola Duckworth, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director at Amnesty International.
“This ruling against the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society sends a chilling signal that other NGOs stepping out of line can share its fate. The Russian authorities have an obligation to guarantee a climate free of intimidation in which human rights activists can work.”
The RCFS was originally closed by court order in October of last year, after years of accusations of ‘supporting terrorism’. In February 2006, RCFS head Stanislav Dmitrievskii was jailed for ‘inciting racial hatred’ after publishing (neither inciteful, racial, nor hate-filled) material by Chechen separatists. This move paved the way for the subsequent closure of RCFS, on the grounds of new legislation that barred people with a record of inciting ‘extremist activities’ from heading NGOs. Dmitrievskii had previously been the target of leaflets labelling him a ‘terrorist’.
After the Supreme Court announced its decision, Stanislav Dmitrievskii told Amnesty International that the RCFS would seek justice at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
He said: “The Supreme Court’s decision is dangerous for civil society and for Russia as a whole. It is a political decision and clearly illustrates that the Russian authorities do not care about civil society. It sends the wrong signal and has not gone unnoticed by the international community.
“In our appeal we have shown that the initial verdict of the court in Nizhnii Novgorod was unlawful. The Supreme Court’s decision has put a number of administrative problems before us but it will not stop our work on human rights.”
