06 Oct 16 | Europe and Central Asia, Magazine, Russia, Student Reading Lists, Volume 45.03 Autumn 2016 Extras
A man lays flowers near the picture of murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya, during a rally in Moscow, Russia, 7 October 2009. CREDIT: EPA / Alamy Stock Photo
On 7 October 2006 investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot and killed in her apartment building in Moscow. In the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine, Russian journalist Andrey Arkhangelsky reflects on Politkovskaya’s legacy 10 years on and looks at the state of journalism in the country today.
Politkovskaya, who worked for newspaper Novaya Gazetta, was known for her investigative reporting, particularly looking into the atrocities committed by Russian armed forces in Chechnya, and her criticism of the Putin administration.
She was a recipient of an Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award in 2002.
Ahead of the anniversary of her death, Index has compiled a reading list of articles written for the magazine both by Politkovskaya and about her. The collection also includes articles exploring media freedom in Russia and why the deaths are Russian journalists seem to go unnoticed and uninvestigated.
From The Cadet Affair: the Disappeared; an extract, written by Anna Politkovskaya, was published in the winter 2010 issue of Index on Censorship magazine
From The Cadet Affair: the Disappeared
December 2010; vol. 39, 4: pp. 209-210.
In 2010 Index published this extract from Nothing But the Truth: Selected Dispatches, a collection of Politkovskaya’s best writings. In this piece, she writes about the disappeared in Chechnya.
Standing Alone
January 2002; vol. 31, 1: pp. 30-34.
An interview with Politkovskaya who, at the time of publication, was living in Vienna, having been sent there for her own safety by Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Noveya Gazetta, after receiving threats from high-ranking officials who had been annoyed by her reports from Chechnya.
Codes of conduct
March 2012; vol. 41, 1: pp. 85-95.
Irena Maryniak considers the hidden network of relationships that continue to shape Russian society, undermine the rule of law and protect the status quo. In this article Maryniak highlights Politkovskaya’s concerns of the effects of the Kremlin’s reach and her work reporting on the atrocities inflicted on the Chechen population by the Russian armed forces and the Russian-backed administration of Akhmad Kadyrov.
Years of Living Dangerously
November 2009; vol. 38, 4: pp. 44-58.
Grit in the engine by Robert McCrum, in the 40 year anniversary issue of Index on Censorship magazine.
Maria Eismont talks to Dmitry Muratov, editor of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, at which Politkovskaya spent seven years as a journalist, about his struggle for press freedom and justice in Russia.
Stopping the Killers
November 2009; vol. 38, 4: pp. 31-43.
In this article Joel Simon, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, discusses how impunity is an urgent issue facing press freedom campaigners; and, after reflecting on Politkovskaya’s murder, outlines a roadmap for action
The Big Squeeze
February 2008; vol. 37, 1: pp. 26-34.
Edward Lucas explains how during Putin’s presidency media freedom has moved from the imperfect to the moribund, in an adaption from his book The New Cold War: how the Kremlin menaces Russia and the West.
Grit in the engine
March 2012; vol. 41, 1: pp. 12-20.
Into the Future; Index interviews Anna Politkovskaya in the winter 2005 issue of Index on Censorship magazine.
Robert McCrum considers Index’s role in the history of the fight for free speech, from the oppression of the Cold War to censorship online; and highlights how Politkovskaya turned to Index for help in making the west understand the dangers Russian journalists face.
Into the Future
November 2005; vol. 34, 4: pp. 120-125.
Index interviews Politkovskaya at the Edinburgh Festival, in which she discusses the future of Russia.
“We lost journalism in Russia”
September 2015; vol. 44, 3: pp. 32-35.
Andrei Aliaksandrau examines the evolution of censorship in Russia, from Soviet institutions to today’s blend of influence and pressure.
Power of the pen
December 2010; vol. 39, 4: pp. 17-23.
Carole Seymour-Jones celebrates the achievements of 50 years of fighting for authors’ freedoms and explains why there is so much more work to be done.
You can read Andrey Arkhangelsky’s article by subscribing to the magazine or taking out a digital subscription from anywhere in the world via Exact Editions (just £18* for the year). Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide.
*Will be charged at local exchange rate outside the UK.
Magazines are also on sale in bookshops, including at the BFI and MagCulture in London, News from Nowhere in Liverpool and Home in Manchester; as well as on Amazon and iTunes. MagCulture will ship to anywhere in the world.
02 Sep 16 | Albania, Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan News, Europe and Central Asia, Kosovo, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Russia, Turkey
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 five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
30 August 2016 – The home of veteran journalist and Index contributor Yavuz Baydar was raided by the police, the journalist reported via Twitter.
The raid came shortly after detention warrants were issued for 35 people including 27 journalists. As of 30 August, of the 27 journalists sought nine have been detained in Turkey while 18 other journalists are reportedly abroad.
Also read by Baydar: Turkey: Losing the rule of law
28 August 2016 – At around 10pm an unidentified individual threw a hand grenade at the house of Mentor Shala, the director of Kosovo’s public broadcaster RTK.
Shala and his family were inside at the time. No casualties were reported but according to the RTK director the explosion was strong and that it had shocked the whole neighbourhood.
Kosovo’s police are investigating the case, which is the second attack on national broadcaster RTK within a week. On 22 August 2016 an explosive device was thrown at the broadcaster’s headquarters.
President Hashim Thaci has condemned the attack. “Criminal attacks against media executives and their families threaten the privacy and freedom of speech, and at the same time seriously damage the image of Kosovo,” he told RTK.
Both attacks were claimed by a group called Rugovasit, which said in a written statement to RTK that the attack was “only a warning”.
Rugovasit blames RTK journalist Mentor Shala for only reporting the government’s perspective. “If he does not resign from RTK, his life is in danger,” they said.
27 August 2016 – Journalist and founder of news agency Novy Region, Alexander Shchetinin, was found dead in his apartment in Kiev.
The National Police confirmed in a statement that “a man with a gunshot wound to the head was discovered on the balcony”. He reportedly died between 8-9.30pm.
Police found cartridges, a gun and a letter at the scene. “The doors to the apartment were closed, the interior looks intact,” police reported.
“Until all the facts are established, until the examination and forensic examination is complete, we are investigating it as a murder,” said Kiev police chief Andrey Kryschenko. “The main lines of enquiry are suicide and connections with his professional activities.”
The Russian-born journalist had lived in the Ukrainian capital since 2005. He was often critical of the Russian government. In 2014, he refused Russian citizenship, later joined the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine.
20 August 2016 – Faeces was poured onto the prominent Russian journalist Yulia Latynina, who works for independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and hosts a programme called Kod Dostupa at radio station Echo of Moscow.
According to Latynina, the incident took place close to the radio’s office at Novy Arbat in central Moscow. An unidentified individual in a motorcycle helmet perpetrated the attack, while his accomplice was waiting for him at a motorcycle nearby. The unidentified individuals fled the scene.
Latynina told Echo of Moscow that it was the 14th or the 15th time she has been attacked. She believes the assailants had been following her for a long time as they seemed to know her daily commute and where she parks her car.
Latynina also believes the incident is connected to her Novaya Gazeta investigations into billionaire Evgeny Prigozhin, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Latynina’s investigations, Prigozhin has orchestrated mass trolling on opposition activists in Saint Petersburg.
22 August 2016 – A prosecutor has asked for a three-month prison sentence for Faig Amirli, the director of the newspaper Azadliq, Radio Free Europe’s Azerbaijan Service.
Amirli’s lawyer declared that his client is being charged for spreading national and religious hatred, along with promoting religious sects and disturbing public order by performing religious activities.
Amirli was detained by a group of unidentified individuals on 20 August. At the time, his whereabouts were unknown while his house was searched by the representatives of Grave Crimes Unit.
Police claim they found literature related to Fethullah Gülen, the alleged orchestrator of the attempted coup in Turkey, in Amirli’s car.
His arrest is considered part of a new crackdown in Azerbaijan ahead of the September’s constitutional referendum.
Also read: Azadliq: “We are working under the dual threat of government harassment and financial insecurity”
26 Aug 16 | Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, Russia, Ukraine
The conflict over Crimea and the fighting in eastern Ukraine has resulted in a media war, which has left both Russian and Ukrainian journalists struggling to report accurately on the situation, writes Mapping Media Freedom correspondent Andrey Kalikh.
In Russia, the partisan media environment has been driven by state-backed broadcasters. Federally financed TV channels — Russia 1 and RT — toe the government line on events in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. In 2015, the government boosted its funding of media to 72 billion rubles ($1.2 billion).
Mapping Media Freedom is monitoring the situation with Ukrainian media and journalists working in Russia. These are some of the cases filed by MMF Russian correspondents.
Reporting teams working for Ukrainian television outlets were barred from attending the March 2016 trial of Nadezhda Savchenko, a pilot captured by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and handed over to Russian military forces. Savchenko was accused of having directed artillery fire that killed two Russian journalists.
Former Los Angeles Times correspondent Sergei Loiko, a Russian, has been repeatedly harassed in Moscow, where he is based, following the publication of articles on the conflict and his book The Airport, a novel set amid the battle for Donetsk airport in eastern Ukraine. In October 2015 he received a threatening phone call, followed in April 2016 by an incident during which four unknown perpetrators approached him as he was entering independent TV Dozhd’s studio to participate in a live programme.
Some journalists have been barred from entering Russia altogether. In one case, Sergei Supinsky, an AFP photographer based in Ukraine, was stopped from traveling to Moscow from Minsk. Supinsky was told he could not board his flight. No reason was given for the ban.
Russian journalists and activists have also become targets for pressure if they are perceived as supporting Ukraine or objecting to Russian involvement in the conflict.
In April 2016, Mikhail Afanasyev, an independent Novaya Gazeta correspondent based in the Republic of Khakassia posted a photo on Facebook of Kiev’s Maidan Square, where he had recently visited. He was immediately targeted with threats and insults by people referring to themselves as “patriots”.
In December 2015, a blogger from the Siberian city of Tomsk received a five-year sentence for “extremist” videos published on his YouTube page. In one of his videos, later removed, Vadim Tyumentsev referred to refugees from eastern Ukraine “who come and stay in Tomsk, although there are enough other problems in the city”. He accused officials of providing more help to the newcomers than the local population.
This article was updated on 6 September 2016 to provide more context and clarification.
20 Oct 15 | Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features, Russia
On 6 November 2010, prominent Russian journalist Oleg Kashin was badly beaten with a steel pipe on his doorstep and nearly killed. He suffered a broken skull and injuries to his legs and hands — including broken fingers and one amputated digit. He was hospitalised in a coma and spent months recovering. Dmitry Medvedev, who was then President of Russia, visited him promising that the case would be solved and the attackers would be punished.
At the time, Kashin’s editor told the BBC that the attack was retribution for articles he had written and that he had recently reported on anti-Kremlin protests and extremist rallies.
Two months prior to the assault, Kashin had had an online quarrel with Andrey Turchak, the powerful governor of the Pskov region. According to the police investigation into the attack, the alleged organiser Alexander Gorbunov paid 3.3 million roubles ($53,000) to ex-employees of the security department of Zaslon, a company owned by Turchak’s family, to beat Kashin. Later the wife of Danila Veselov, one of the defendants, gave an interview to the Kommersant newspaper, claiming that her husband had met Turchak before the attack and had recorded the governor saying that Kashin had to be beaten so he “could not write anymore”.
After five years of investigation, in September 2015, Kashin publicly named the men who were officially accused of attempted murder. Despite evidence of the possible involvement of Turchak, who is a son of a friend of Putin, he has not been questioned about the attack.
On 3 October, Kashin posted A Letter to the Leaders of the Russian Federation on his blog. In it, Kashin wrote about his frustrations, saying: “Your will in Russia is stronger than any law, and simply obeying the law is an impossible fantasy.” The open letter accuses the government of hindering the investigation into his violent assault and ends as a strong indictment of the whole political system in Russia.
Moreover, the investigator who arrested the attackers was suspended from the case. His successor was quoted in Kashin’s letter saying: “There’s the law, but there’s also the man in charge, and the will of the boss is always stronger than any law.”
In his letter, Kashin directly accused the leaders of the country of protecting Turchak from any judicial responsibility.
“You’ve decided to side with your Governor Turchak; you’re protecting him and his gang of thugs and murderers. It would make sense for somebody like me — a victim of this gang — to be outraged about all this and tell you that it’s dishonest and unjust, but I understand that such words would only make you laugh. You have complete and absolute control over the adoption and implementation of laws in Russia, and yet you still live like criminals.”
Kashin admitted that he does not expect a fair punishment for the alleged mastermind of his beating: “I can see perfectly well that the worst thing Turchak faces now is a quiet resignation, timed long after any developments in my case. This is the only justice citizens can expect, and it means that your system isn’t capable of any kind of justice at all.”
Kashin’s case has become the symbol of impunity for attacks and murders of journalists. Hundreds of leading Russian journalists signed a petition that demands the police question Turchak. Some of them publicly boycotted a literature festival in the Pskov region, while the Kremlin and the Gorbunov’s press office remained silent.
Kashin said he wishes all journalists would boycott Turchak and continue to send requests about his role in Kashin’s case to government officials. However, that level of solidarity seems to be impossible when so much of the media is directly run by the Kremlin and do not dare to do anything without its approval, said Kashin. He also holds out no hope for support from the Russian Union of Journalists, which he describes as “a weird organization” that doesn’t function properly.
According to Glasnost Defence Foundation, over 150 journalists were killed in Russia in last 15 years. The majority of these cases remain unsolved. Those who are accused of obstruction of professional activities of journalists, rarely face a fair punishment. Between 2006-2014, only one such defendant was sentenced to jail.
The murder of Igor Domnikov, a journalist with Novaya Gazeta, in 2000 has become the first case in the history of modern Russia where the mastermind behind the killing of a journalist was officially accused. In this case, it was a former Vice-Governor of Lipetsk region Sergey Dobrovskiy. After 15 years of investigations, he was summoned to a court in April 2015, but a month later the case against him was dropped due to the statute of limitations.
Kashin said he will not be surprised if his case goes the same way. However, he stressed that the difference is that the investigators don’t need 10 years more as there is already evidence.
“We can see that the government is just not interested in punishing criminals,” Kashin said.
Mapping Media Freedom
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