10 Jul 07 | Comment
‘If I see you’re involved in self-censorship, or covering up information, I’ll fire you myself!,’ Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, the independent Russian radio station, tells his staff at a meeting discussing the current media climate in Russia. Ekho Moskvy, one of the few remaining independent media outlets in the country, is well known for its sharp criticism of the Russian government. A number of its journalists are former TV celebrities who came to the company from the independent television channel TVS, which shut down in 2003.
Sergey Dorenko, Evgeny Kiselyev, Svetlana Sorokina, and Victor Shenderovich used to host some of the most popular political shows on Russian TV. They often presented strong criticism of governmental policies, and of the president. But back in the 90s, before Putin, the political climate in Russia was different. Now their programmes on Ekho Moskvy face the threat of stronger censorship.
On 11 July, the Russian parliament adopted amendments designed to intensify the fight against ‘extremism’. The new bill ‘bans the spread of extremist materials, their production, and storage for distribution purposes on the territory of the Russian Federation’. The maximum fine for ‘mass distribution of extremist materials’ is 15 days imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 rubles ($116 US) for ordinary citizens, 5,000 rubles (US $195) for officials, and 100,000 rubles (US $3 890) for companies.
If, as expected, the parliament and the president approve the bill later this year, all media outlets will be responsible for circulating information on closed or outlawed public organisations and groups: when mentioning them, reporters will have to indicate the fact that these organisations have been banned or shut down. List of public and religious organisations that have been closed down or outlawed will be posted on the Internet and published in the media.
The bill includes very broad definitions of the term ‘extremism’, complementing the previous version. Besides the old definitions of extremism as national, racial, social, ideological, or political hatred, it could now be considered extremist to publicly approve of any action preventing citizens from exercising their right to vote and participate in elections. This means that no one would be allowed to call for a boycott of elections.
‘They’ve tightened [legislation] to such an extent that it is now almost impossible to differentiate between extremist statements and ordinary controversy, political argument or criticism of the state,’ Gennady Gudkov, State Duma Security Committee member and retired Federal Security Service colonel, told Ekho Moskvy on 5 July. ‘It’s all left up to the official, the judge, or the prosecutor.’
‘Now, in order to suspend some “unlikable” [disobedient from the authorities’ point of view] media, one will have to exert much less effort then before,’ Maria Kitaichik, a lawyer from St Petersburg, says. ‘It will be enough just to assume that the media distributed deliberately false information; criminal procedure on libel against journalists or media companies won’t be necessary any more.’
A couple of months ago, Ekho Moskvy started receiving letters from prosecutors and security services. Authorities were concerned about broadcasted interviews with Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov, the leaders of oppositional, pro-democracy coalition Other Russia, and about the commentaries of Yulia Latynina, a well-known critic of the Kremlin from Ekho Moskvy.
The bill also includes provisions for security services to tap telephone conversations in the event of suspicion of a broad range of crimes. Until now, this power only pertained to suspicion of the most serious of crimes.
This is not the first time the government had introduced Draconian measures to combat ‘extremism’. Last year, it adopted laws which meant that slandering a government official could be treated as extremism, although a court must first rule on the statements in question. The law also criminalised the creation and/or distribution of taped or printed material deemed extremist.
Russian Internet daily Gazeta.ru has reported that the parliament deputies of United Russia, the major party in the State Duma, were told that after the parliamentary summer vacations they are to propose more anti-extremism law amendments.
According to the Moscow based NGO Media Law and Policy Institute, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Tajikistan are the only states in the world currently exercising this type of legislation.
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08 May 07 | News and features
Freedom House’s annual report Freedom of the Press, released last month, caused an outcry over the state of local media in Russia. Freedom House, a leading American civil rights watch-dog, put Russia on 164th place among 195 countries, and named the country “Not Free”. International press-freedom groups supported this evaluation: according to New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists, Russia is the second most dangerous country for journalists; Reporters without borders say that this country is 147th among 168 states, in terms of press freedom.
On 3 May, Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO’s Director-General, accused Russian authorities for the growing number of journalists’ murders and impunity, in the conference speech in Medellin, Colombia. Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe released an accusatory statement on human rights suppression in Russia, highlighting the unsolved murder of the prominent journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
In response, the local officials and pro-Kremlin experts are persistently reminding that Russian journalists and authorities do not need any evaluation from the outside world to serve the public’s needs.
On the same day, Elena Zelinskaya, the vice-president of Media Union, (a Russian NGO uniting and supporting local media companies), and deputy chair at the Public Chamber’s Committee for Communications, Information Policies and Press Freedom, told the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy about a new project, Index of Press Freedom. The Russian Public Chamber and Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) will study the situation in the local media. The project participants are still to define the methods for this research, but Zelinskaya mentioned the economical level of each Russian region, the quality of journalists’ education, and regional practice of the rule of law as the criteria for such evaluation. ‘It seems to us that the evaluations that any foreign organization offers, are mostly based on the opinions… the experts’ views,’ Zelinskaya says. ‘We would like to use facts for our analysis. Our task is to understand what is going on in our country.’ According to Zelinskaya, the Public Chamber must ‘control’ press freedom in Russia, and the project aims to reveal the factors that influence freedom in media.
Anatly Kucherena, the chairman of Public Chamber’s Committee for Public Control over the law enforcement agencies, and the leader of Civil Society public movement, told Russian newspaper Kommersant daily that on Monday, May 7, he would send papers to Brussels for registering the new Association of human rights organisations. Human rights activists from Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, USA will participate in this association, which ‘will monitor civil freedoms in the West and prepare ratings, similar to those, where Russia is represented as an outsider.’
Denis Dragunsky, the editor of political journal Kosmopolis, says: ‘Russian press is obviously less free then in Finland and Sweden, for instance, but Russia is a European country, observing human rights and freedoms.’
Boris Reznik, the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee for Informational Policies, told the local media that he was sceptical ‘such ratings’. ‘It is not clear what criteria are used for these reports,’ Reznik said. ‘At the same time, we should recognize that we are not totally successful in press freedom development. But the question is whether the journalists themselves need freedom. Today many media companies refuse to be free voluntarily. It is easier for them to be obedient.’
The majority of Russian journalists though believe that the local media is heavily censored. The Guild of Press Publishers, a nonprofit partnership of Russian publishers of printed media and industry suppliers, conducted a survey titled Media Market and the Prospects of Civil Society in Russia, which showed that around 70% of Russian journalists recognize the fact of censorship of the local media. Initially, the research aimed to prove that since Perestroika (Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberal reforms) started, Russian media transformed from propaganda into the true reporting, but the polls do not support this hypothesis. Virtually all Russian journalists deny the existence of press freedom in Russia. As for the public, only 27% of Russian citizens trust local media.
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01 Jan 07 | Russia
Just before my last trip to Chechnya in mid-September (2002) my colleagues at Novaya Gazeta began to receive threats and were told to pass on the message that I shouldn’t go to Chechnya any more. If I did, my life would be in danger.
As always, our paper has its ‘own people’ on the general staff and the ministry of defence – people who broadly share our views. 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. 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. He was engaged in work quite unprecedented for a soldier in Chechnya.
Only an hour before the helicopter was shot down, he told me the task of his commission was to gather data on crimes committed by the military, analyse their findings, put them in some order and submit the information for the president’s consideration. Nothing of the kind had been done before.
Their helicopter was shot down almost exactly over the city centre. All the members of the commission perished and, since they were already on their way to Khankala airbase to take a plane back to Moscow, so did all the material they had collected. That part of the story was published by Novaya Gazeta.
Before the 19 September issue was sent to the printers, our chief editor Dmitry Muratov was summoned to the ministry of defence (or so I understand) and asked to explain how on earth such allegations could be made. He gave them an answer, after which the pressure really began. There should be no publication, he was told.
Nevertheless, he decided to go ahead, publishing a very truncated version of what I had written. At that point, the same people at the ministry who had claimed our report was false now conceded it was true.
But they began to warn of new threats: they had learned that certain people had run out of patience with my articles. It was, in other words, the same kind of conversation as before my last trip to Chechnya.
Then we heard that a particular officer, a ‘Lieutenant Larin’, whom I had described in print as a war criminal, was sending letters to the newspaper and similar notes to the ministry. The deaths and torture of several people lie on his conscience and the evidence against him is incontrovertible.
Soon there were warnings that I’d better stay at home. Meanwhile, the internal affairs ministry would track down and arrest this self-appointed military hitman, and deputy minister (Vladimir) Vasilyev would himself take charge of the operation. I was supposed to remain at our apartment and go nowhere.
But they made no progress in finding ‘Larin’, and I began to realise that this was simply another way of forcing me to stop work. The newspaper decided I should leave the country until the editors were sure I could again live a normal life and resume my work.
The paper was forced to omit from my story the sort of detail that is vital to the credibility of an article like this, which suggested the military themselves had downed the helicopter.
All my subsequent difficulties began with those details. If these details surface, the ministry of defence warned our chief editor, that’s the end for you . . . In fact, since I was moving around the city at the time, I can personally testify to what happened, as can others who were there with me.
And these were no ordinary citizens: among them were Chechen policemen and Grozny Energy Company employees who, like me, were trapped inside the city. FSB (former KGB) General Platonov was also there. Currently, he is a deputy to Anatoly Chubais, chief executive of United Energy Systems, a key Kremlin player throughout the 1990s and a hawk on Chechnya.
All these saw and knew exactly what I know. Platonov is not only Chubais’s deputy but remains a deputy to FSB director Patrushev (in early 2001, the ‘anti-terrorist operation’ in Chechnya was transferred from the military command of the Combined Forces Group to the FSB and its director Patrushev in Moscow placed in overall charge).
No one else saw and knew as much about what happened as Platonov – he couldn’t help but see it. Not one person was allowed into the city centre after 9.00 am that morning. And yet a helicopter was downed there. Different branches of the military are split over future policy in Chechnya.
There are good reasons why the recent public statements of defence ministry spokesmen all repeat the same phrases: ‘We deny the possibility of negotiations’; ‘It’s out of the question’;
“We are just doing our job.” Indeed they are: their ‘sweep and cleanse’ operations have become even more brutal. Let us suppose that those representing certain other branches of the military on the ground in Chechnya are pursuing a rather different policy.
That is where you should seek the reason for the deaths of all the commission members. I’m just a small cog in that machine – someone who happened to be in the thick of events when no other journalists were around.
Those who want to continue fighting seem to have the upper hand; they represent the more powerful section within the so-called CFG, the Combined Forces Group.
To avoid repetition of the disastrous lack of coordination between ministries of defence and internal affairs and the FSB during the first Chechen conflict in 1994-96, overall command of army, police and other paramilitary and special units in the present war was given to the military.
Although the FSB supposedly now exercise overall control of the ‘anti-terrorist operation’, the military are too strong for them. On the fateful day the helicopter was downed and the commission perished, not even servicemen and officers were permitted to enter the central, cordoned-off area of Grozny.
Only defence ministry officials were allowed through. Even FSB and ministry of justice people were kept out; that was extraordinary. No one was permitted to enter the area where the helicopter was about to fall: representatives of other military bodies and organisations, even ranking officers, had no right to go there.
I don’t think we should expect too much from the defence ministry, nor from President Putin (in the light of the US-led campaign in Afghanistan. Editor). He has received carte blanche to take the measures and employ the forces he considers necessary in Chechnya.
I’m thinking of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s recent activities and words spoken by Chancellor Schroeder when Putin was visiting Germany. As you know, it was then said that Europe should re-examine its stance on Chechnya.
Their position was already pretty feeble and bore no relation to the real state of affairs in Chechnya and the abuse of human rights there. If, however, they are going to alter their position, then it’s clear what will happen. In practical terms they’ll support Putin.
Whatever he does will be fine by them. I think he’s been working steadily and persistently towards that end for some time. And I’m sure he’ll make good use of it now. Not for the first time in the present war, there’s been a battle to see whose nerve is stronger.
Putin held back (over the West’s post 9/11 War on Terror) for some while: we shan’t support the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, he said, but we’ll offer them back-up. Then he agreed to supply them with arms and, evidently, advisers. In exchange he received a free hand in Chechnya.
That’s the way things are likely to go, I’m afraid. I can’t say when it will happen, but whatever happens there will be a more intensive ‘liquidation of Chechen partisans’. As always in Russia, however, it all depends on the methods to be used. What will the ‘liquidation of Chechen bandits’ amount to this time?
Will they herd everyone else into concentration camps or hold repeated sweep operations in all the population centres in Chechnya? I can’t answer for Chechen President Maskhadov, but will offer a brief analysis of his actions.
In my view, he is doing nothing whatsoever. He has retreated into his shell and is thinking, to the exclusion of all else, about his own immediate future – he’s forgotten the Chechen nation. Just as the federal authorities in Moscow have abandoned the Chechens, so now have the other side.
The nation has to fend for itself, with no leadership or protection. It survives as best it can. If people need to take revenge for their tortured and murdered relatives, they will. If they need to say nothing, they’ll keep their mouths shut.
In such circumstances, which are the equivalent of a civil war, and under continuing pressure from the federal forces, no one today can say whom the Chechen nation would vote for if elections were held. No one now has any idea whom they’d elect and in that respect everyone has committed the same enormous mistake.
Maskhadov has obviously been driven into a corner. But the struggle for independence has become an obsession with him: he will hear of nothing else. I don’t really understand what use independence will be to him, when he, Shamil Basayev and his immediate bodyguard are all that’s left.
The first duty of a president is to fight for the well-being of his nation. I have my own president and it makes no difference that I personally did not vote for Putin. He remains the most important figure in the Russian state.
And I’d like him to enable me, and everyone else, to live a normal life. I’m referring to the laws that should govern our existence. I find myself in a situation, however, where no one gives a damn how I survive.
I’m cut off from my family. I don’t know what will happen in the future to my two children. It is not law that rules Russia today. There’s no person and no organisation to which you can turn and be certain that the laws have any force.
I have no thoughts about my future. And that’s the worst of all. I just want everything to change so I can go back and live in Moscow again.
I can’t imagine spending any length of time here. Or in any other place, for that matter. I must do all in my power to return to Moscow. But I have no idea when that will be. If people in my country have no protection from this lawless regime, that means I survive here while others are dying.
Over the last year I’ve been in that position too often. People who were my witnesses and informants in Chechnya have died for that reason, and that reason alone, as soon as I left their homes.
If it again proves the case, then how can I go on living abroad while others are dying in my place?
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