02 Nov 16 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, Russia, Ukraine
Today is the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists. Since 2006, 827 journalists have been killed for their reporting. Nine out of 10 of these cases go unpunished.
Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom platform verified a number of reports of impunity since it began monitoring threats to press freedom across Europe in May 2014. Here are just five reports from three countries of concern: Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
“Impunity empowers those who orchestrate crimes and leaves victims feeling vulnerable and abandoned,” said Hannah Machlin, Index’s project officer for MMF. “What we are witnessing is a vicious cycle of unresolved crimes against journalists.”
Most recently, MMF reported that Sergey Dorovskoy, who the Lyublinski district court in Moscow recognised as orchestrating the murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Igor Domnikov, received a 200,000 rubles (€2,860) fine but no jail time because the statute of limitations had passed. This small punishment was in compensation for “moral damages” to Domnikov’s wife.
From 1998-2000, Igor Domnikov headed Novaya Gazeta’s special projects department which ran investigations. He had published a series of articles about Dorovskoy’s alleged criminal activities and corruption.
On 19 February 2014, Vyacheslav Veremiy, a Ukrainian journalist for the newspaper, Vesti, died from injuries he sustained from a gunshot and a brutal beating. Veremiy was targeted while covering the anti-government Euromaidan protests in the country’s capital Kyiv. The two-year-old case has produced suspects but no prosecutions. The investigation remains open.
The year ended with an attack on the editor-in-chief of the news website Taiga.info, Yevgeniy Mezdrikov in Russia. Two individuals posed as couriers to gain access to the offices, where they assaulted Mezdrikov. After just one year the offender was granted a pardon.
In Ukraine, on 21 January 2015, Rivne TV journalists Arten Lahovsky and Kateryna Munkachi were physically attacked. The assailants released an unknown substance from a gas canister, choking Lahovsky. The journalists believe the attack to be premeditated and have criticised police failure to investigate.
In Belarus, officials did not file a criminal case in the assault of TUT.by journalist Pavel Dabravolski, who said he was beaten on 25 January 2016 by police while filming another incident at a court facility. The officers involved testified that Dabravolski did not present a press card when requested and grabbed at them while shouting insults. Additionally, police claimed that Dabravolski was interfering with their duties.
Dabravolski captured the incident on his mobile phone, though the recording was not considered as part of the three-month investigation into the incident. According to the journalist, he was thrown to the ground and kicked by police. He was fined for charges of contempt of court and disobeying legal demands.
Index on Censorship calls for more to be done to ensure justice is served for crimes against journalists.
28 Oct 16 | Belgium, Europe and Central Asia, Kosovo, Latvia, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Russia
Each week, Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. Here are five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
Sergey Leleka, a columnist for the pro-government newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, suggested in an article on 24 October that independent journalists Anton Nosik and Sergei Parkhomenko should be “cured in gas chambers”.
According to Leleka, he wrote the article in reaction to jokes by Nosik and Parkhomenko about the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov which passed through the English Channel emitting thick black smoke.
After the journalists complained to KP, the media outlet deleted the offending paragraph. However, Leleka’s original post is still available on his Facebook page.
A number of Belgian media websites, including De Standaard, RTBF, Het Nieuwsblad, Gazet van Antwerpen and Het Belang van Limburg were subject to a co-ordinated DDoS attack on 24 October, which temporarily shut the sites down.
A group that calls itself the Syrian Cyber Army claimed responsibility.
“We have attacked the Belgian media outlets that support the terrible actions of their Air Force in Syria,” the group said in a message to the newspapers. It wanted to “shame the Belgian authorities, which killed dozens of civilians in the village of Hassajik near Aleppo on 18 October”.
Belgium’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation.
Editor-in-chief of Gazeta Express, Leonard Kerquki, received death threats after the airing of his documentary which mentions war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The documentary, Hunting the KLA, aired in two parts and covers crimes and prosecutions from the war between Serbia and Kosovo at the end of the 1990s. The threats were made after the showing of the second part on 23 October.
The Journalist Association of Kosovo condemned the threats, as did the OSCE mission in Kosovo. “I condemn the threats and calls for violence against Kërquki. Freedom of expression must be upheld and respected in all circumstances,” said the head of Kosovo’s OSCE mission, Jan Braathu. “I call on rule of law authorities to investigate these threats immediately and bring the perpetrators to justice,” he said.
Ella Taranova, a senior producer for Russia Today, was detained by Latvian border guards on 21 October and later deported.
The incident occurred after Taranova was admitted to Latvia and to participate in a conference in a seaside suburb of Jurmala.
Taranova was blacklisted for being an employee of Russia Today, which the Latvian authorities see as a hostile propaganda organ of the Russian government. The head of Russia Today, Dmitry Kiselyov, is blacklisted from travelling to the European Union and other countries under EU sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
After her detention, Taranova told journalists: “I did not engage in any political activities nor do I intend to.” She added that she was unaware that she had been blacklisted since 2014 and had attended several such conferences prior to 2014.
At around 6am on 21 October, Russian Investigative Committee (SKR) officers entered and searched the apartment of Ksenia Babich, journalist and spokesperson for human rights international organisation Russian Justice Initiative.
According to Shelepin, SKR officers confiscated a notebook, phones and memory cards.
Babich was also asked to go to the SKR for questioning, Ilia Shelepin, a journalist and Babich’s acquaintance, wrote on Facebook. Babich believes the search is related to the case of Artyom Skoropadski, a press secretary of the Ukrainian organisation Pravyi Sektorwhich, which is banned in Russia.
21 Oct 16 | Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features, Russia
Russia’s recent elections have been described as “the dullest in recent memory”. But as Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom (MMF) project shows there was no shortage of media violations and claims of voter fraud.
On 18 September, the day of the vote, journalists across Russia were denied entry, attacked and arrested while attempting to monitor polling stations.
Rosbalt, a Russian news website, reported several instances of journalists – among them reporters for the BBC – being escorted out of a polling station by police officers and employees of the Vasileostrovsky district administration.
Further reports of journalists’ rights being violated in Saint Petersburg were widespread.
In Siberia, reporters were obstructed even from entering polling stations. A number working for Reuters were denied entry after officials at the location said they needed permission from local authorities but there is no law requiring this of international reporters. A voter claimed the counter used by a Reuters reporter to keep track of people voting was actually a radioactive device, and the reporter should be removed. This was not enforced.
Denis Volin, editor-in-chief of local news site Orlovskie Novosti, was barred from entering a polling station in Oryol. Volin was attempting to take photos of the polling station but officials demanded he stop. Journalists in Russia have a right to take photos and observe voting.
A journalist in Samara was illegally barred from a polling station despite having the necessary accreditation. When the journalist tried to stay for the vote count, officials demanded additional accreditation, which does not exist.
Journalist Dmitri Antonenkov and an activist with the Public Monitoring Commission, Vasili Rybakov, were both detained at a polling station in Ekaterinburg while investigating the illegal use of the Russian state coat-of-arms in polling stations. The pair were detained for two hours and their identification confiscated without return.
MMF Russian correspondent, Ekaterina Buchneva, said: “In general, attempts to bar journalists from polling stations were very common. We saw a lot of reports from Saint Petersburg and Moscow but the investigation by Reuters (they sent journalists to 11 polling stations across central and western Russia) proves that it was common for the rest of the country too, but, unfortunately, remained under-reported.”
Another of MMF’s Russian correspondents, Andrey Kalikh, said: “What is common is that journalists monitoring elections are often threatened if they reveal voter fraud at a polling station. There were dozens of cases in the 2011-2012 election campaign (state parliament and presidential elections) where registered journalists were kicked out, beaten up or otherwise harassed.”
Vladimir Romensky, a reporter for the independent TV channel Dozhd, for example, was involved in an altercation at a polling station in Moscow. Romensky was visiting the station to verify information about voter fraud. Earlier in the day a member of the polling board told Romensky that certain ballots were marked for the United Russia party. A man who refused to introduce himself denied access to Romensky and his crew. While Romensky was inquiring, a nearby police officer called armed guards from the station. The guards demanded Romensky’s paperwork and, despite having all his documents, the guards forced Romensky and his crew out of the location.
In another incident, Fontanka news correspondent Dmitry Korotkov was investigating the process of “carouseling”, a form of rigging elections where a group of selected people vote multiple times in different polling stations. When asked whether or not carouseling is a recent trend, Kalikh said, “No, it is not. It has existed before, the most cases were registered in 2011-2012. But the [Korotkov] case… is one of the most outrageous ones.”
Korotkov received information that voters with a special passport stamp were given multiple ballots at a polling station in the Kirov district. Korotkov was able to receive the stamp and received four different ballots at the station, even though he was not registered for the district. The polling official allowed Korotkov to sign as another voter.
Korotkov reported the incident and the polling board promised to investigate. Instead, Korotkov was detained by police officers on charges of illegally receiving ballots. The police interrogated Korotkov and his case was taken to court on 28 September. The journalist could be facing charges of using someone else’s ballot in a general election; his case is still under investigation.
Buchneva said: “The Fontanka reported that after questioning Korotkov and a suspect, who acted as an election official and gave Korotkov ballots named after another person, ‘the judge apparently had no more doubt, that Korotkov signed for another person not to vote illegally, as it was stated in the police report’. However, it is too early to say that the journalist will not be punished.”
Journalist Dmitri Antonenkov and an activist with the Public Monitoring Commission, Vasili Rybakov, were also both detained at a polling station in Ekaterinburg while investigating the illegal use of the Russian state coat-of-arms in polling stations. The pair were detained for two hours and their identification confiscated without return.
Winning 54% of the vote, United Russia now has a majority in the Duma, allowing them to change the country’s constitution without the approval of other parties.
20 Oct 16 | Europe and Central Asia, mobile, News and features, Russia, Ukraine
Andriy Klyvynyuk (right) and fellow activist Eugene Stepanenko in front of a projection of Ai Weiwei’s freedom of expression symbol in London. Photo: Nicolai Khalezin
Ukrainian rock musician and activist Andriy Klyvynyuk spoke to Index on Censorship about his support for popular film director and pro-Ukrainian activist Oleg Sentsov and the other Ukrainian political prisoners held by Russia.
Klyvynyuk, the frontman of the pop group Boombox, was a speaker at Belarus Free Theatre’s Freedom of Expression in Ukraine event at the House of Commons in London, where he called on the British government to demand Sentsov’s release. Sentsov is serving a 20-year prison sentence on charges of being part of a terrorist conspiracy. He has stated that he was tortured by investigators and that a key witness recanted in the courtroom on the grounds that evidence had been extorted under torture. His lawyers describe the case against him as “absurd and fictitious”.
Sentsov faces another 18 years in jail but Klyvynyuk, who drove an ambulance during the pro-EU Euromaidan protests in 2014, is determined that Ukraine will continue to work towards a future free of Russian interference.
“We used to cry but now we are laughing because we are not afraid,” he told Index. “We are only 25 years old as a country, and we are at the very beginning of a road. We want to be open and don’t want to see a great wall. I don’t want to be a big star somewhere, having everything but not being able to travel, speak with you, and that was the point of Euromaidan. We are not for the money, the wealth, houses and cars – it’s not what we want, it’s not the point of life at all.”
According to Klyvynyuk, it is Russia that is afraid. “They are very frightened to lose their dominance, to lose their money, to lose their superpower, in such a way as our mafia lost their power,” he said. “The officials are so much afraid that they invaded an independent state.”
Other speakers at the House of Commons event included journalist and author Peter Pomerantsev, and film and theatre director turned soldier Eugene Stepanenko. A video was shown including messages of solidarity from artists including fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and actor Will Attenborough.
Klyvynyuk welcomed these contributions. Although he does not mix his art with his activism, he feels strongly that those with a public position have a responsibility to speak out on human rights abuses. Those who shut their eyes to it, he says, are “clowns dancing on the tables of dictators”.
“I’m a patriot of course but I don’t think Ukraine is bigger or better than any other country in the world,” he said, calling on the world’s media to refocus on Russia’s behaviour towards its neighbour. “This is why we talk about political prisoners all over the world and wars all over the world. But to forget about situations like that, then everybody says ‘Oh, how are you? Are you okay?’ three years later. I say ‘Hey, stop, you know nothing’, and if you are a media person, if you’ve got followers on your social media, if thousands of people are waiting to hear from you, you should find some time to tell these important things.”
As for Oleg Sentsov, Klyvynyuk’s message was one of hope. “I hope that he won’t be broken inside, I hope that he, all of them, will find strength to live through, and then after we win, go out and not just sit and do nothing but continue their work, what they are here for.”
