29 Aug 12 | Digital Freedom, Russia
Vladimir Putin says [Ru] he doesn’t use the internet very much. But he has definitely recognised its power. The biggest protest rallies in post-Soviet Russia, against Putin and his party United Russia, were organised online. No wonder that the parliamentary and presidential elections and Putin’s inauguration were all marked by the hacking of independent media websites and LiveJournal, Russia’s most popular blogging platform, via DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. (more…)
30 May 12 | Russia
Moscow journalist Sergei Aslanyan was stabbed repeatedly earlier this week. Anslanyan, who specialises in motoring and hosts a programme on state Mayak radio station, was attacked on 29 May after a stranger called him and asked to leave his apartment “for a talk”. Aslanyan was attacked as he left the house. He managed to call an ambulance himself, and is now in a stable condition in hospital, where he is under police guard.
Some of Aslanyan’s colleagues believe the attack was caused by comments about the prophet Muhammad he made on a radio station. Sergei Arkhipov, head or radio at VGTRK state holding, which owns Mayak radio, said Aslanyan heard his attacker say “You dislike Allah”.
The Muslim society of Tatarstan had expressed concerns about Aslanyan’s anti-Muslim comments in an appeal to Russia’s general prosecutor’s office. After the journalist was attacked, they condemned both the assault and premature conclusions about “Muslim trace” in the case. Their leader Rishat Khamidullin told journalists that Aslanyan was treated brutally and “such an attack after his insulting statements is no more than a provocation against the Muslims”.
Attacks on journalists are common in Russia. In April Novaya Gazeta reporter Elena Milashina was beaten near her house. In May three journalists of Novaya Gazeta branch in Ryazan were beaten. Another newspaper’s reporter, Diana Khachatryan, alleged she was threatened by pro-Kremlin youth movements after publishing an article about the United Russia congress.
The latest most scandalous attacks on journalists include the beatings of Kommersant’s Oleg Kashin, and Khimki Truth’s Mikhail Beketov, and the murders of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova, who wrote columns for the same paper while working for Memorial human rights centre. In the vast majority of these cases, no one has been brough to justice.
Freedom House placed Russia at 172 out of 197 countries for press freedom this year.
30 May 12 | Russia
Holding rallies and demonstrations is a right, specified in article 31 of the Russian constitution and one which is regularly abused by Russian authorities.
Since 31 July 2009 the opposition has held protests in support of peaceful assembly on the 31 day of each month that has 31 days. Three years of such protests have brought no luck to the group which suffers from the violation of article 31 most — the Russian gay community. For the seventh time Moscow authorities have blocked their attempts to hold a gay-pride parade. Police arrested forty people who came out to the unsanctioned demonstration: both LGBT activists and radical nationalists, who tried to confront them.
Last year the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia’s gay-pride ban was illegal, but the country’s authorities don’t seem to have considered the court’s decision. As Pride organiser and gay rights advocate Nikolay Alekseev told Index on Censorship, “Russian authorities cannot abandon ECHR’s decision forever, at least because of the fact that the Russian gay community has 15 more appeals waiting to be won there”. According to Alekseev’s plan, at some point the court will confirm the systematic violation of gay rights in Russia, and the issue will be brought up by the European Committee of Ministers, which is likely to influence Russian policy on gay community.
“We were ready to hold our demonstration any place in Moscow this time, but the authorities said that in any place we would violate the standards of morality,” said Alekseev, adding that “Russian authorities ignore the gay community and European Convention on Human Rights because they go unpunished and don’t receive tough ultimatums on the issue from their European counterparts”.
In March “United Russia” deputies in Saint-Petersburg successfully passed a scandalous law “against promotion of homosexuality”, which forbids LGBT activities and bans any information about LGBT promotion among minors. This means any LGBT activist can be fined up to 500 thousand roubles (10,782 GBP).
That is why gay rights activists have to take precautions and self-censor, says Gulnara Sultanova, director of “Side by Side”, a Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival, which has been held every autumn in Saint-Petersburg since 2008. The festival’s core idea is fighting discrimination and supporting congenial relationship between LGBT representatives and heterosexuals. Sultanova told Index this year her colleagues have to set an age limit to avoid fines, despite the fact some “films about gender identity and equal rights are useful to teenagers”.
Homosexuality was only decriminalised in Russia in 1993. Before that, gay men were put in prisons and lesbians were sent to mental hospitals. Most of the active part of Russian society were raised in that time, when it was inappropriate to even discuss LGBT issues. This, according to Sultanova, resulted in a vicious circle, where “a lot of gays and lesbians are afraid to come out and participate in civil protests under rainbow flags, and many people consider gay groups too closed to express solidarity towards them”. It will take years to break this circle, but the tendency, according to Sultanova, is positive.
Her optimism is shared by LGBT activist and Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Kostuchenko. Last year during an unsanctioned gay pride march in Moscow she was beaten by ultranationalist youth group activist. This year, she says, protests against Vladimir Putin united polar groups: nationalists, antinationalts and LGBT activists. Together they had to run from the police, spend time in detention centres for wearing white ribbons (symbol of protest) and demand new fair elections.
“Since December people have realised that lawlessnessness concerns everyone, and if the state systematically violates the rights of one group (LGBT, for instance), it could any time violate the rights of any other, which is exactly what happens now,” Kostuchenko concludes.
05 Apr 12 | Index Index, minipost
A number of incidents in the last few weeks have raised concerns over the harassment of journalists in Uzbekistan. On 26 March, independent journalist Viktor Krymzalov was convicted of defamation for an article which was published without a byline. The plaintiff “assumed” it was written by Krymzalov, but no evidence was provided to support the claim. Journalist Elena Bondar was charged with with “inciting national, racial, ethnic or religious hatred,” after sending letters to the media about alleged government harassment. Novaya Gazeta journalist Victoria Ivleva was recently denied entry to the country.
