16 Dec 2011 | Index Index, minipost
A gunman has shot and killed a newspaper founder in Russia’s North Caucasus region. Gadzhimurat Kamalov, who founded the newspaper Chernovik, was shot eight times as he left the newspaper office in Dagestan province, shortly before midnight on Thursday. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Chernovik is renowned for its investigation of government corruption. Journalists in Russia who cover corruption face serious risks. There have been 19 unsolved murders of journalists in Russia since 2000.
10 Dec 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Tens of thousands of people participated in opposition rallies against alleged unfair parliamentary elections in Russia. The biggest was in Moscow: up to 120 thousand people demanded Russia’s prime-minister Vladimir Putin resignation.
“Putin Thief”, “We need fair elections”, “Register opposition parties” — these were slogans of Russia’s biggest protest rally since the day of parliamentary elections and since the beginning of post-Soviet Russia.
Famous Russian writer Boris Akunin, known for his public support to former oligarch and Putin’s opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said he “hasn’t seen such Moscow for the last 20 years”. Opposition leaders, rights activists, well-known journalists and public figures appealed to the people to take further action to control authorities and use democratic tools to change government policy. The rally’s resolution included five points:
– Political prisoners to be released immediately;
– Elections results to be cancelled;
– The head of the Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov to resign,and his activities and election fraud to be investigated;
– Opposition parties to be registered, democratic election law to be passed;
– New fair elections to be held.
Rally participants agreed the authorities now have two weeks to react and fulfil their requirements. If not, a new rally, a bigger one, will be held on 24 December in Moscow and other cities. Opposition parties Yabloko and Communist Party, who took part in protest on 10 December, also resolved to remind the authorities about people’s demands on two rallies of their own — on 17 and 18 December respectively.
This day is not just remarkable because Moscow hasn’t faceda rally like this in 20 years, but also because other cities protested. Similar rallies were held in Saint Petersburg, Khabarovsk, Perm, Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Samara amd other cities. Protests of solidarity were held outside Russia, too, in London, New-York, Oslo, Helsinki, Lisbon, Barcelona, Paris, Jerusalem, Tokio, Dublin, Berlin, Prague, Rome.
In most Russian cities policemen arrested tens of acivists, but in Moscow they earned applause from the rally participants for their unexpected accommodation. Previous Moscow protests against elections results have been marked with hundreds of detentions and cruel police actions.
Russian TV, just like the Moscow police, surprised people by broadcasting news about the rally. Previous protests were not covered. The current rally waseven covered live, although neither Putin nor Medvedev were criticised on air and the rally’s topic — mass election fraud — was not explained or discussed during the broadcasts. Most items looked like reports on how well the police performed and how bad the traffic jams were because of the rally.
Inspite of rights activists’ words about “civil society rebirth” and “dramatic changes in Russia”, the Central Election Commission deputy Stanislav Vavilov said the Commission will not review election results. Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalist the government “has not yet formed an opinion on the rally”.
But post-Soviet Russia has changed already: Never before has it faced tens of thousands of people chanting that they, not Putin and his “United Russia”, are the real power.
7 Dec 2011 | News and features
Activists and opposition politicians arrested as Russians speak out against the prime minister’s party. Elena Vlasenko reports
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5 Dec 2011 | Digital Freedom, Russia
Parliamentary elections were held in Russia yesterday (4 December). Several independent media websites were hacked on election day; journalists and rights activists claim this was to prevent coverage of electoral violations.
With 96 per cent of votes processed by 5 December, United Russia has polled 49.54 per cent. That’s a 15 per cent decrease since the 2007 elections. Consequently, United Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, has lost its constitutional majority. It now has just 238 out of 450 seats in the Russian State Duma.
The other seats were taken by the Communist Party (which polled 19.16 per cent), A Just Russia (13.22) and LDPR (11.66). Three parties, including the opposition Yabloko led by noted Russian economist Grigory Yavlinsky, didn’t get over the threshold of seven per cent necessary to enter the Duma.
Every major party bar United Russia complained of violations. Observers and journalists reported vote fraud and “carousels” when a group of the same people voted several times at different poll stations in an organised way.
Monitors said they were removed from polling stations after trying to complain, or that their complaints were not logged. At one polling station in Moscow the head of a district election comission ostentatiously poured hot tea on complaints filed by an observer.
Russia’s leading independent watchdog — GOLOS Association — reported over 5,000 violations. Yabloko and Communist Party observers said that in Moscow alone they logged no fewer than 50 incidents. The Interior Ministry said there were 2,000 election law violations registered, none of which were likely to affect the elections results.
Protests were held in Moscow and St Petersburg against “unfair elections” by several opposition movements. Most of the participants (about 100 people in each city) were detained.
It was difficult for journalists to report violations. Many independent media websites were hacked early on 4 December and were inaccessible for the whole day. One couldn’t read about fraud on websites of Echo Moskvy radio station, Kommersant newspaper, The New Times, Forbes Russia and Bolshoy Gorod magazines, or the Slon.ru news portal. Blogging service LiveJournal, a popular discussion platform, was also down, having experienced biggest hacking attack in its history. Finally, GOLOS’ website and its remarkable Map of Election Violations — an online map with messages about elections fraud from all over Russia — were hacked.
With the cyber-attacks preventing observers reporting fraud online, journalists and rights activists instead used Facebook and Twitter to spread and exchange information.
But in spite of their efforts, the head of the Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov expressed confidence in the results, claiming that thousands of violations reports were “lies” and the elections were held in line with the law. The OSCE filed a report saying that the Duma elections were “technically well-administered”, but “marked by the convergence of the State and the governing party”.
Critics rallied on 5 December, with over 5,000 people in Moscow protesting against “illegitimate elections”. Russian TV has yet to report this.
