11 Mar 08 | Comment
On 4 March, to mark the publication of its latest issue, ‘How Free is the Russian Media?’, Index on Censorship hosted a discussion in London and Moscow on the future of the Russian media under President Medvedev. The discussion featured John Kampfner, Arkady Babchenko (author of One Soldier’s War in Chechnya), Maria Eismont (New Eurasia Foundation, Moscow), Alexander Verkhovsky (Sova Centre, Moscow), Natalia Rostova (Novaya Gazeta), Oleg Panfilov (Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations), Maria Yulikova (Carnegie Centre) and Sergei Bachinin (Vyatsky Nablyudatel’) and Anna Sevortian (Centre for Development of Democracy).
The event was supported by the Open Society Foundation and the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway.
07 Oct 07 | 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 07 | 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.
31 Aug 07 | Comment, News and features
On Monday, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika announced the arrest of ten people suspected of involvement in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. Those held include officials from the Russian Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB). Chaika said that the people ultimately behind the murder are living outside the Russian Federation, adding that the murder was committed with the intention of destabilising Russia and undermining public confidence in the authorities. The prosecutor general also suggested that the criminals responsible are seeking to re-impose the rule of the oligarchs in Russia.
As one of the journalists present at the press conference, I was struck by the ambivalence of the chief prosecutor’s statement. The editors of Novaya Gazeta are grateful to the investigators who have undertaken a massive task, examined all versions of events and taken account of every significant piece of information. Over a period of ten months they have drawn up a list of suspects that also includes members of the police force and the special services. In the conditions that prevail in Russia, this is a remarkable achievement.
A great deal remains to be done, however. The evidence has not been fully gathered or compiled, interviews have not been completed, connections have yet to be made – in other words, a successful outcome to the investigation remains a long way off.
That is why it is so troubling that the prosecutor general is summing up before a full indictment has been issued, and long before legal proceedings have been completed. What is more, he has 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. Either the Russian president is blessed with prophetic powers and can foresee the results of outstanding criminal cases, or the public prosecutor is making an effort to please Putin.
At the press conference, I asked Yuri Chaika if the coincidence embarrassed him, and if any political pressure had been exerted on the investigators from the Prosecutor General’s Office. Chaika appeared slightly offended, responded that nothing embarrassed him, and categorically rejected any possibility of political pressure.
It will be difficult for investigators to remain independent, however, when both the president and the chief prosecutor have publicly indicated where the orchestrators of the murder should be sought, and what their motives were. In Russia, an investigator does not have the authority to resist pressure. Recently publicised cases indicate that if an investigator does attempt to act independently, he is prevented from performing his professional duties, asked to resign, or prosecuted under criminal law.
Yuri Chaika’s declaration, that Politkovskaya’s murder was commissioned from the outside by forces intent on destabilising Russia, resembles the statement of a politician rather than a public prosecutor. It fails to stand up to criticism if only because the murder of a journalist could not destabilise the country. Over the past ten years, more than 200 journalists have been killed or have died in suspicious circumstances. The Russian public is neither surprised nor intimidated by the murders: people became inured to these things long ago.
Some of the figures who have died were very widely known. Vladislav Listyev, a television presenter loved by millions of viewers, was shot dead on 1 March 1995. The crime has not been solved. Dmitry Kholodov, a journalist for the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper (which has a print run of over two million), was killed by an explosive device in his office in 1994. The suspects have been fully acquitted. The chief editor of Forbes magazine, Paul Khlebnikov, was shot and killed on 9 July 2004. Once again, the suspects were subsequently acquitted in court (which only indicates the ‘quality’ of the evidence). These events failed to create any kind of stir in Russia. After three years, no one had associated the murder of the editor of Forbes with attempts to undermine state security.
Now the prosecutor general has linked the murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Paul Khlebnikov by saying that they were to the advantage of forces from abroad, and intended to destabilise Russia. His language is redolent of times when the internal problems of the Soviet Union were linked exclusively to the machinations of enemies outside the country. Furthermore the argument is weak. If we are to suppose even for a moment that forces outside Russia’s borders are in a position to hire officials from the Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry to kill a journalist, then the leaders of the special services, the police force and the Prosecutor General’s Office should resign tomorrow.
