05 Dec 11 | 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.
02 Dec 11 | Europe and Central Asia, Russia
Rights activists have said there has been an onslaught of freedom of expression violations in Russia as the country’s 4 December parliamentary elections draw closer.
Russia’s leading independent election watchdog, GOLOS (voice) Association, has become the focus of a a propaganda war, coming under sustained attacks from pro-government media and persecution from law enforcement agencies. At the end of November, NTV channel reporters stormed the association’s Moscow office with a video camera, shouting out questions about the activists’ connections to the CIA. GOLOS’s deputy director Grigory Melkonyants recorded the invasion on his mobile phone and then posted it on YouTube. While recording, Melkonyants repeatedly described NTV as a propaganda tool of Vladimir Putin’s chief strategist, Vladislav Surkov.
“The channel’s reporters interviewed us several days ago and had a chance to receive all the answers they sought”, Melkonyants explained. “The same day they invaded the office, they could have gone to an independent press centre in Moscow where GOLOS was giving a press conference”. The head of GOLOS, Liliya Shibanova, called this “administrative harassment in order to prevent the association from doing its job — stopping violations of law at elections”. One of the association’s regional offices in Altay was also searched by local prosecutors.
GOLOS was established in 2000 as an independent organisation to monitor elections and prevent fraud. It is being financed mainly by grants from Europe and the United States, which ensures its members are not dependent on the Russian government.
The harrassment of the organisation continues. Soon after the NTV incident, deputies from three political parties (United Russia, A Just Russia and LDPR) appealed to Russia’s general prosecutor to investigate GOLOS and establish if it intrudes on the electoral campaign. Moscow Meschanskaya Prosecutor’s office complied and filed an administrative case against GOLOS, saying the association violated elections law by publishing research and poll results less than five days before the elections. Prosecutors claimed the association “aims to create a negative image of one of the political parties” but did not provide any details. GOLOS denied these allegations, calling them a part of a discrediting campaign.
Rights activists assume that the one party most unhappy with GOLOS is United Russia, which is led by Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin. The party may have been irritated by a special project from GOLOS titled The Map of Election Violations, which is a Google-based interactive map where all Russian internet users can leave messages about law violations during the electoral campaign. GOLOS experts check these messages and report violations to law enforcement agencies and election commissions. On 2 December, the map described almost five thousand incidents.
When prosecutors started investigating GOLOS’ activities, the organisations information partner, online news site Gazeta.ru, removed links to the map. The site’s deputy editor Roman Badanin resigned in protest.
According to the map, the most frequent subject of complaints is United Russia. The most common violation is using administrative resources to agitate for United Russia or against their opponents. Local authorities in Moscow and other cities told businessmen to make their employees vote for the party, and some offered money for votes.
Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin claimed it was absolutely fine that posters calling on citizens to vote were of a similar design to those calling for votes for United Russia. Several opposition members tried to hold an “elections funeral” in late November — a protest in front of the Central Election Commission in Moscow which was to symbolise the “death” of free election process. They were all detained, some of them fined. The head of the Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov also critisised GOLOS alleging the association agitated against United Russia.
As elections go ahead, those critical of the Kremlin have two strategies. One was proposed by a well-known blogger Aleksey Navalny, who suggests that people vote for any party except United Russia and work with GOLOS to report election law violations at polling stations.
Another was made popular by unregistered opposition People’s Freedom Party led by Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Ryzhkov. They say the best thing to do on 4 December is to protest election violations across Russia.
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.
