Russia: “Defamation suits a key factor in suppressing free speech as long as Vladimir Putin rules the country”

01 Dec 11 | Europe and Central Asia, Russia

Earlier this month, Russia’s Department of Presidential Affairs won three defamation lawsuits against newspaper Novaya Gazeta in just one week.

“The court is being used as a censorship instrument; it has been serving officials rather than law lately”, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov told Index on Censorship.

The Department of Presidential Affairs of the Russian Federation is a state executive authority responsible for logistical support and social amenities for Russian federal authorities.

“Novaya Gazeta” is a twice-weekly newspaper owned by media tycoon Alexander Lebedev and the former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. It is famous for its investigations and criticism of authorities.

In the week of 14–20 November Moscow’s Basmanny Court passed judgements on three libel claims brought by Department of Presidential Affairs against Novaya Gazeta. They all concerned publications about federal budget spending for controversial purposes.

One of the articles concerned firms close to the Department of Presidential Affairs which took part in drawing budget funds while reconstructing Russia’s main memorial to soldiers of World War II — the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Kremlin wall. The article contained a supposition that 91 million roubles were withdrawn from Russian federal budget for reconstruction works which might have had already been done.

The Department of Presidential Affairs filed a suit against Novaya Gazeta and the article’s author Roman Anin, claiming the information about alleged misapplication of funds was defamatory. The other two defamation suits the Department won against “Novaya Gazeta” were brought in response to articles about its controversial transactions with short-lived companies, and high staff salaries which exceeded the ones publically declared.

The newspaper will also have to pay the Department and personally it’s head Vladimir Kozhin 100 thousand roubles (2049,77 GBP) in damages for the article about extremely high salaries. This article’s author Zinaida Burskaya has to pay 10 thousand roubles (204,98 GBP). The statements in them will also have to be refuted in “Novaya Gazeta”.

The Department’s spokesperson Viktor Khrekov said he was satisfied with the court’s decisions.

The newspaper’s attorney Yaroslav Kozheurov, in his order, said he will appeal the court’s decision. He expressed confidence that in spite of the judge’s decision the facts mentioned in the articles were sufficiently proven in the court.

“But even such controversial proceedings are better than shooting journalists,” says Muratov. Two“Novaya Gazeta” journalists were assassinated in last five years: Anna Politkovskaya, Anastasia Baburova. “Defamation suits will remain a key factor in suppressing free speech as long as Vladimir Putin rules the country,” Muratov concluded.

On the Record

14 Aug 11 | Uncategorized

Many of the modern issues that Index on Censorship tackles are what I call the shades of grey. From Wikileaks to privacy to hate speech and phone hacking, free expression comes hurtling against other rights or perceived rights. Rarely do absolutes prevail in this more complex and technological world.

It was therefore salutary for me to be reminded of the black and white which still confronts us: journalists and activists murdered, imprisoned or threatened for trying to hold the powerful to account and expose wrongdoing.

The British theatre group IceandFire transport audiences into the worlds of five crusading reporters and photo-journalists as they risk their lives for the sake of their stories. Several of these real-life cases have been followed and documented by Index. One of them, Lal Wickrematunge, Editor of the Sri Lankan newspaper Sunday Leader was reportedly threatened by his country’s president by telephone only a week ago. His brother, Lasantha, was murdered by the authorities in 2009.

The travails of Lydia Cacho, one of the world’s most fearless journalists, were movingly portrayed. Only six weeks ago Cacho says she received anonymous death threats for her continued campaign to expose corruption and criminality, particularly the role of senior politicians in sex offences and trafficking. From the work of a brave Israeli journalist working inside the West Bank, to an American defying the US military’s largely successful attempts to sanitise the Iraq war, the play brings home not just the bravery, but also the doubts and dilemmas faced by a small but determined group of reporters. The episode most familiar to me personally was the newsroom at Novaya Gazeta, for long a beacon of fearless journalism in a Russia where the attacks on free speech have remained constant over the past 20 years, long after the collapse of Communism.

Within 20 metres of leaving the theatre, in Hackney in east London, I came across three riot police vans. It was, at first glance, a shock. The officers were lounging around, eating Macdonalds. The city was still reeling from riots and looting. Yet amid all the gloom and self-doubt that has beset Britons, and only a month after the height of the phone-hacking scandal, it was worth remembering that, there are still many countries grappling with troubles on an altogether different scale.

John Kampfner is chief executive of Index on Censorship

 

Belarus: Russian reporter expelled

01 Jun 11 | Index Index, minipost

Russian reporter Rodion Marinichev was yesterday arrested, stripped of his press accreditation and given 24 hours to leave the Belarus. He has been banned from returning to the country for five years. The correspondent, from Russian television station Dozhd, was detained by police just hours after he interviewed Irina Khalip who is serving a two year suspended prison sentence. She is the a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta and the wife of Andrei Sannikov, a former presidential candidate who was recently given a five year prison sentence for “organising and preparing a public order disruption.”