7 Oct 2007 | Russia
Just before my last trip to Chechnya in mid-September my colleagues at Novaya gazeta began receiving threats and were told to pass on the message: I shouldn’t go to Chechnya any more, they said, because if I did my life would be in danger. As always, our paper has its “own people” in the General Staff and the Ministry of Defence – I mean those who shares similar views to our own. We spoke to people at the ministry but, despite their advice, I did go back to Chechnya, only to find myself blockaded in the capital, Grozny. The city was sealed off after a series of strange events there. Controls were so tight you couldn’t even move between different districts within the city, let alone make your way out of Grozny on foot. On that day, 17 September, a helicopter carrying a commission, headed by Major-General Anatoly Pozdnyakov, from the General Staff in Moscow was shot down directly over the city. The general was engaged in work quite unprecedented for a soldier in Chechnya. (more…)
26 Sep 2007 | Comment
The recent developments into investigations of Russian journalists’ murders, the attempts to accuse publicists and writers in extremism and other crimes along with Duma’s legislation activities, prompts the thought that the major task of Russian authorities is to fight against media and writers, rather then criminals.
On 12 September, Kommersant reported that the prosecutor’s office of Moscow Central Administrative District closed the criminal investigation into the March death of Kommersant defense correspondent Ivan Safronov because of ‘an absence of foul play’.
Safronov threw himself out of the staircase window in his apartment building without any obvious reason: he had a successful career and happy family life. He was a respected military correspondent who often covered sensitive issues in the fields of defence, army and space. The prosecutors opened a criminal case on ‘incitement to suicide’, but failed to find either those who may have prompted the journalist to commit suicide, or any personal motives for taking his own life. At the same time, according to Kommersant’s deputy editor, Iliya Bulavinov, investigators totally neglected the possibility of work-related inducement to suicide, and the case was not fully investigated.
On 27 August, the Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika claimed the arrest of 10 suspects into the prominent investigative reporter from Novaya gazeta, Anna Politkovskaya. Four of the suspects have been charged. Chaika also reported that besides the members of a criminal gang, some current and former police and Federal Security Service officers helped organising the murder. The reports brought some hope to the murdered journalists’ families and colleagues, as this was the first more or less effective investigation following around 47 murders of journalists in Russia since 1992, considered work-related.
However, in the two days following Chaika’s report, two former policemen, suspects in Politkovskaya’s murder, were released. Moreover, the prosecutor’s statement on the masterminds of the murder seriously confused the journalist’s colleagues. Novaya gazeta’s Roman Shleinov reported that the Prosecutor General ‘repeated almost word for word a statement President Vladimir Putin made in the immediate aftermath of Politkovskaya’s murder, blaming forces outside Russia for attempting to undermine the current situation in the country.’ For Novaya gazeta’s journalists this was a sign that any further investigation would be politically influenced.
Politicised murders are very hard to investigate, given the high level of corruption in Russian law enforcement agencies. Nevertheless, some serious cases are actually investigated, although the investigations rarely lead to charges.
In June 2004, well-known St Petersburg journalist Maksim Maksimov disappeared. The investigators managed to find and arrest the suspects. Two witnesses provided a full description of Maksimov’s murder, and others added details. The story appeared in local and international media many times. But since the suspects were experienced officers from the corruption division of Internal Affairs Ministry, the prosecutors had trouble bringing them to justice. The formal reason for this is the fact that journalist’s body was never found. Meanwhile, unofficial sources says, the suspected officers boast that they have high-ranked patrons who will soon help them to get free.
Yet, Manana Aslamazyan, the head of the Educated Media Foundation, the organisation which provided professional training for Russian journalists, after mistakenly violating the administrative code, was branded a criminal right away. The foundation was shut down. In Nizhny Novgorod police confiscated all Novaya Gazeta’s computers ‘to check for unlicensed software’; Krasnodar prosecutors found ‘signs of extremism’ in the books of respected political scientist Andrey Piontkovsky; Moscow prosecutors threatened the lawyer and writer Pavel Astakhov with a libel case, because Astakhov had described corrupt Russian policemen in his novel. The well-known historian and journalist Vladimir Pribylovsky is suspected of extremism. The celebrated satirist Victor Shenderovich is suspected of inciting ethnic and national hatred. When someone shot at Moscow investigative reporter Andrey Kalitin, police refused to open a criminal case based on murder attempt, insisting that this was just a case of hooliganism.
The state Duma seems to support these developments. The parliament’s lower chamber is ready to consider a new bill that bans mentioning the nationality and religion of crimes and their victims. Rather then beating nationalism and extremism, this law will obviously hamper spreading the information on hate crimes and nationalism in Russia. The previous Duma’s anti-extremism amendments gave the law enforcement agencies more opportunities to silence journalists and suspend media.
Investigating contract-style murders, disappearances, and motiveless suicides, is certainly much more difficult then bringing libel cases and catching journalists and educators red-handed for rules violations. Hopefully, the new government, which is meant to fight corruption, and the next parliament, will at least change the priorities in the work of law enforcement agencies. Otherwise, when it comes to the journalists and writers, this work looks more like witch-hunting than fighting with criminals.
10 Jul 2007 | Comment
‘If I see you’re involved in self-censorship, or covering up information, I’ll fire you myself!,’ Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, the independent Russian radio station, tells his staff at a meeting discussing the current media climate in Russia. Ekho Moskvy, one of the few remaining independent media outlets in the country, is well known for its sharp criticism of the Russian government. A number of its journalists are former TV celebrities who came to the company from the independent television channel TVS, which shut down in 2003.
Sergey Dorenko, Evgeny Kiselyev, Svetlana Sorokina, and Victor Shenderovich used to host some of the most popular political shows on Russian TV. They often presented strong criticism of governmental policies, and of the president. But back in the 90s, before Putin, the political climate in Russia was different. Now their programmes on Ekho Moskvy face the threat of stronger censorship.
On 11 July, the Russian parliament adopted amendments designed to intensify the fight against ‘extremism’. The new bill ‘bans the spread of extremist materials, their production, and storage for distribution purposes on the territory of the Russian Federation’. The maximum fine for ‘mass distribution of extremist materials’ is 15 days imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 rubles ($116 US) for ordinary citizens, 5,000 rubles (US $195) for officials, and 100,000 rubles (US $3 890) for companies.
If, as expected, the parliament and the president approve the bill later this year, all media outlets will be responsible for circulating information on closed or outlawed public organisations and groups: when mentioning them, reporters will have to indicate the fact that these organisations have been banned or shut down. List of public and religious organisations that have been closed down or outlawed will be posted on the Internet and published in the media.
The bill includes very broad definitions of the term ‘extremism’, complementing the previous version. Besides the old definitions of extremism as national, racial, social, ideological, or political hatred, it could now be considered extremist to publicly approve of any action preventing citizens from exercising their right to vote and participate in elections. This means that no one would be allowed to call for a boycott of elections.
‘They’ve tightened [legislation] to such an extent that it is now almost impossible to differentiate between extremist statements and ordinary controversy, political argument or criticism of the state,’ Gennady Gudkov, State Duma Security Committee member and retired Federal Security Service colonel, told Ekho Moskvy on 5 July. ‘It’s all left up to the official, the judge, or the prosecutor.’
‘Now, in order to suspend some “unlikable” [disobedient from the authorities’ point of view] media, one will have to exert much less effort then before,’ Maria Kitaichik, a lawyer from St Petersburg, says. ‘It will be enough just to assume that the media distributed deliberately false information; criminal procedure on libel against journalists or media companies won’t be necessary any more.’
A couple of months ago, Ekho Moskvy started receiving letters from prosecutors and security services. Authorities were concerned about broadcasted interviews with Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov, the leaders of oppositional, pro-democracy coalition Other Russia, and about the commentaries of Yulia Latynina, a well-known critic of the Kremlin from Ekho Moskvy.
The bill also includes provisions for security services to tap telephone conversations in the event of suspicion of a broad range of crimes. Until now, this power only pertained to suspicion of the most serious of crimes.
This is not the first time the government had introduced Draconian measures to combat ‘extremism’. Last year, it adopted laws which meant that slandering a government official could be treated as extremism, although a court must first rule on the statements in question. The law also criminalised the creation and/or distribution of taped or printed material deemed extremist.
Russian Internet daily Gazeta.ru has reported that the parliament deputies of United Russia, the major party in the State Duma, were told that after the parliamentary summer vacations they are to propose more anti-extremism law amendments.
According to the Moscow based NGO Media Law and Policy Institute, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Tajikistan are the only states in the world currently exercising this type of legislation.
(more…)
8 May 2007 | News and features
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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