Elena Vlasenko reports on Russian state-owned television channel NTV’s move to censor a broadcast detailing a campaign for a fair investigation into the kidnapping and alleged torture of Chechen man Islam Umarpashaev
A 30 October report concerning the work of a Russian human rights group working in Chechnya was pulled off of the air on NTV, one of the nation’s largest federal channels. The segment covering the work of Joint Mobile Group with the case of Islam Umarpashaev, a Chechen allegedly kidnapped and tortured by state forces, was broadcast in Eastern Russia, but blocked in the rest of the country.The Joint Mobile Group has been campaigning for justice and a fair investigation of the kidnapping and torture of Umarpashaev by Chechen law enforcement officials in 2009.
Members of the Russian artist group VOINA were arrested yesterday. Russian police, allegedly posing as German television journalists, arrested and detained Natalia Sokol along with her two-year-old son overnight at a police station in Moscow. Sokol’s requests to speak to her lawyer were rejected. On the same night, plain clothes police tried to break into the apartment of another VOINA member, Leonid Nikolayev. Only weeks ago, all charges against the group were dropped by an investigations committee. Read more about the political street art that has taken Russia by storm in the latest issue of the magazine, The Art Issue, which explores censorship in the contemporary art world.
Yelena Baturina, one of Russia’s wealthiest women, has won damages from The Sunday Times after the newspaper wrongly reported that she purchased a £50m London mansion through an off-shore “front company”. It was a sensitive topic because Baturina’s husband Yuri Luzkhov was mayor of Moscow at the time and as the wife of a public official her financial assets had to be made public under anti-corruption legislation. Baturina was issued an apology and financial compensation.