11 Mar 15 | Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features
A coalition of international press freedom organisations has hit out at a move to force some Russian “government-controlled” TV stations off Lithuanian airwaves.
Lithuania’s Committee on Radio and Television is reportedly considering, at the request of the government, to ban two Russian television channels from broadcasting to the Baltic country.
The channels in question — RTR Planeta and NTV Mir Lithuania — have in the past been handed down temporary suspensions of specific programs, according to the commission head Edmundas Vaitiekunas.
“If a ban is imposed on the whole channel due to repeated violations, I believe it should be longer … I believe it should be up to one year,” Vaitiekunas added in comments to the Baltic News Service earlier this year.
Russian state-owned media such as RT (formerly Russia Today), has come under fire for alleged distortion of facts in the their coverage, especially in relation to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
In a letter this week to the Lithuanian President, media freedom organisations including the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers and the World Press Freedom Committee, argued that while they understand the objection to certain Russian broadcasts in “the current tense situation”, they consider a ban to be counterproductive and in contradiction of international free speech standards.
“If put into effect, bans on broadcasts across frontiers would almost inevitably be seized upon by the Russian authorities to justify bans on broadcasts by independent news media from other countries,” the letter states.
“It is an established conviction in free societies that the best answer to bad speech is more speech. We can see from the reaction to recent events in Moscow that there is a large public that is open to arguments, news reports and information to counteract official propaganda. The risk should not be taken to cut off such audiences from the free flow of information from outside their borders,” the group added.
This article was posted on Wednesday March 11 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
10 Mar 15 | mobile, News and features, Russia
As so often at the sessions of the United Nations Human Rights Council, some interventions by states go unnoticed.
Under the famous ceiling of room XX created by Miquel Barcel in the Palais des Nations in Geneva, the on-going session of the Council is no different. Some of those unnoticed statements deserve our attention.
One in particular.
On Thursday, 5 March, one of the United Nations’ chief human rights voices, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, presented his first annual report to the council. It is his first since he took up the position of high commissioner for human rights in September 2014. From terrorism, torture and harassment of human rights defenders to the reorganisation of his office, the high commissioner’s report aims at presenting the state of human rights, the major threats against them and how he aims at building up his office to face those realities.
Al Hussein’s mandate, which Norway at the council called “an authoritative voice on human rights, built on […] repeated confirmation of its independence,” is what the Russian Federation in fact wants to silence.
Russia, which is today one of the 47 members of the council, was infuriated at the high commissioner’s statement presenting his report. It is traditional for states mentioned by international human rights mechanisms to accuse such instruments for being politicised and obeying “double standards.”
Russia went a step further by “condemning the high commissioner’s attempts to stigmatise any states for their acts or omissions in the field of human rights, even if they indeed took place.” Russia does not refer to politicisation or to attention the high commissioner would be giving to situations in certain countries only, but instead calls upon the United Nations voice for human rights to stop mentioning any country all together, whatever human rights violation took place in the country. In fact, Russia calls for the high commissioner to be silent.
Such a statement should not remain unnoticed because it sheds light on how Russia sees the international system; not one of standards and principles challenging states but rather one of obedience and muteness serving the states. The challenge Russia is facing with the high commissioner’s report is in fact a reflection of its disrespect for international law, be it in the way it has led suppression of civil society at home or its military activities in Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea.
Because we must applaud those who stand firm for rights, we must also make sure that declarations by states who aim at silencing them do not go unnoticed. This one in particular.
This guest post was published on 10 March 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
05 Mar 15 | Awards, mobile, Russia
Ella Polyakova, chairwoman of Soldiers’ Mothers St. Petersburg branch
Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia is an NGO network dedicated to improving transparency and exposing human rights abuses in the Russian military. It aims to provide soldiers’ families with reliable information, which the notoriously secretive Russian military has kept private. It also provides legal advice for Russian soldiers and their families, and to conscientious objectors.
“The organisation operates from general principles of human rights and the rule of law. We are in favour of contract service for the Russian armed forces whereby men are recruited on the basis of their intellectual, physical and spiritual readiness. We speak out against forced conscription and believe a transition to a professional army would significantly improve human rights and relations between the military and civilians,” Ella Polyakova from Soldiers’ Mothers St. Petersburg branch told Index on Censorship via email.
The Soldiers’ Mothers groups were established in 1989, in the last days of the Soviet Union. One of their first responsibilities was to personally negotiate for political prisoners left behind by the Russian army in former socialist republics. The group also calls attention to brutal “dedovshchina” or hazing tactics used on junior soldiers, ranging from beatings and sexual abuse to torture and enslavement. Because the abuse is perpetrated by senior officers, it often cannot be officially reported, leading to distorted figures. For example, in 2010 the committee reported 2,000 deaths from hazing, while Russia’s Defence Ministry declared only 14.
Vladimir Putin has insistently denied that Russian forces have had any involvement with Ukraine’s civil war, in which pro-Russian separatists have been fighting government forces since April 2014. Officially, any Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine are volunteering, not acting on behalf of the Kremlin – in December 2014 Putin described such men as answering “a call of the heart”.
The secrecy surrounding the disappearances of soldiers has mirrored past operations by the Russian military. During conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya in the 1980s and 1990s, the Russian army only landed planes carrying soldiers’ bodies at night, to cover up escalating casualty figures.
From August 2014, Soldiers’ Mothers members began revealing that their investigations had found that many wounded or killed Russian soldiers had been fighting in Ukraine. Head of the committee Valentina Melnikova announced that her research showed that between 10,000-15,000 Russian troops had been sent over the border in August. Her information was derived from mothers and wives of servicemen who were sent on military exercises close to the Ukraine border, and who subsequently stopped communicating with their families.
There has been a systematic silencing and smearing of committee members who have reported on Ukraine deaths. Lyudmila Bogatenkova, head of the Budennovsk branch of Soldiers’ Mothers, was arrested and charged with a four-year-old fraud conviction, after she announced that 11 Russian soldiers were killed fighting in Ukraine. After her release she had to be treated in hospital.
Polyakova demanded a government investigation after receiving information about 100 Russian soldiers allegedly killed and 300 wounded in Ukraine. Soon after, her branch was labelled a “foreign agent” by the government – even though the committee of Soldiers’ Mothers no longer receives foreign funding, one of the prerequisites of the classification. Her committee faces serious problems as a result, including being subjected to complex reporting requirements, and additional inspections and controls.
“To make matters worse, after the organisation was put on the register, a film crew from a state television channel burst into our offices and blackened us with dishonest coverage of our work,” Polyakova told Index. “Later that night, someone smashed the windows of our director Olga Alexeeva’s car. Human rights activists linked to Soldiers’ Mothers received many threats and insults by text message and email.”
But despite the pressures they face, they intend to continue their work, and also set up “a human rights information and analysis agency” to increase contact with other NGOs and the media.
“We are glad that we are able work effectively to defend human rights and to take part in positive changes in the lives of our citizens,” the group said of their Index award nomination. “It is nice to know that this work is valued by our colleagues.”
With additional reporting by Will Haydon
This article was posted on Thursday March 5 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
20 Feb 15 | Awards, mobile, Russia
Journalism nominee Ekho Moskvy
Ekho Moskvy (Echo Moscow) is an independent Russian radio station. One of few media outlets that is critical of Vladimir Putin’s regime, it is revered by many as the last bastion of free speech in the country.
Ekho was set up in 1990 by radio veterans jaded with Soviet propaganda, and has taken an interrogative stance towards Russia’s government ever since. Its focus is on maintaining balance – it airs pro and anti-Kremlin voices in equal measure. Its editor-in-chief, Alexei Venediktov, has often done battle with Putin and his government. In 2012 Putin is said to have remarked that Ekho served foreign interests, and “pour[ed] diarrhoea over me day and night”.
During the 1990s, Russia’s news outlets developed into a world-respected critical force. But since Putin came into power in 1999, the media’s role as objective watchdog has diminished, and most news organisations are now resolutely pro-Kremlin.
In 2014, Russia attracted significant international condemnation over its involvement with the Ukraine civil war. In response, Putin began to cultivate an us-versus-them atmosphere in his country which saw his popular approval ratings grow to 80 per cent. Such an atmosphere has little room for dissidence, and anti-government voices have been silenced. The remaining politically independent news outlets are gradually being banned, crippled or brought in line with the Kremlin.
In the autumn 2014 edition of Index on Censorship magazine, contributor Helen Womack interviewed Sergei Buntman, the station’s co-founder. Womack wrote:
“There are various theories as to how Ekho gets away with it. Some say the radio and associated website, with a following of nearly one million in Moscow and three million in the regions, is tolerated because it allows the intelligentsia to let off steam, with little impact on the rest of the TV-watching country. Others say it allows the Kremlin to argue to the world that free speech is not dead in Russia. And one theory has it that Kremlin staff themselves depend on Echo to be properly informed because they can’t rely on their own propaganda.”
Buntman has another explanation, Womack wrote. “It’s no miracle and no wonder,” he told her. “You’d be surprised but a lot actually depends on us. Many journalists just give in too soon; they give up at the first hurdle.”
Last year was especially turbulent for Ekho Moskvy, which fought Putin’s media crackdown on many fronts. Its website was banned in March by Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media watchdog, after it published a blog post by leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny. In December, the Dagestan limb of the station was shut down by Roskomnadzor for no official reason.
The outlet was issued its own warning from Roskomnadzor in October. The watchdog cited two interviews aired by Ekho with journalists who provided first-hand accounts of fighting in eastern Ukraine. Roskomnadzor said the programme contained “information justifying war crimes,” and ordered the station to take down the interview transcripts from its website. Two cautions from Roskomnadzor in a year usually leads to an organisation’s closure.
Alexander Plyushchev, who conducted the banned interviews, was fired by Ekho’s owner Gazprom-Media in November, though Venediktov would later reject the dismissal and reinstate Plyushchev. Ostensibly, Plyushchev was sacked because of an insensitive tweet he had sent about the death of the son of Putin’s chief of staff. But Venediktov has suggested that Plyushchev’s controversial interviews the month before are behind the firing by Gazprom-Media owner Mikhail Lesin, Putin’s former press minister.
Despite challenges, the station’s news coverage was commended for staying true to its spirit of independence. Reports on the fighting between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukraine government were praised for their even-handedness, at a time when the majority of Russian media took a staunchly pro-Kremlin approach. As a result, Venediktov and his colleagues have appeared on several blacklists and have been labelled “enemies of Russia”.
This article was posted on 20 February 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
