5 Feb 2014 | News and features, Russia
Several thousand protesters marched through central Moscow on 2 February 2014 to call for the release of 20 people who were arrested after clashes between police and demonstrators on 6th May of 2012. Photo: Nickolay Vinokurov / Demotix
Media will face increased restrictions in the build up to the Winter Games in Sochi as Russian president Vladimir Putin tries to rehabilitate a damaged domestic reputation, experts suggest.
Tighter controls on dissident media, more proactive use of state news outlets to mold public consensus, and obstacles to foreign reporters operating in the region can all be expected as the games begin on 7 February.
While Russian authorities have hailed the Games as a triumph, ongoing disputes over the payment of migrant workers, the environmental impact of Sochi’s intensive development, forced evictions of residents, intensive security measures, and Russia’s controversial gay propaganda law have all generated a domestic backlash that many believe is being deliberately ignored by state media. On 17 October, 2013, Roman Kuznetsov, a migrant worker from the Russian city of Orenburg who had helped build the Media Centre for the Sochi Olympic Games, sewed his lips shut with a needle and thread in protest against his employer’s failure to pay him several months of wages. He carried a sign that explained “Please help get reporters attention! I am not from around here”.
In an interview with select global media, Putin explained “I would like the participants, guests, journalists and all those who watch the Games on TV and learn about them from the mass media to see a new Russia, see its personality and its possibilities, take a fresh and unbiased look at the country”. Close restrictions recently imposed on press activity suggest otherwise. Only a small number of Olympic Events have been cleared for coverage by local journalists, including the arrival of IOC delegations and formal updates offered by federal officials. Access to government activities is granted only to the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company.
In a report produced by the Centre for the Protection of Journalists, a number of local journalists allege a more proactive media strategy in addition to direct censorship. Several reporters suggested that it was fairly common for media that receive funding to be directly censored by the administration. Local journalists also reported that the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company often stage interviews, and had been passing off closely scripted lines as dialogue with ordinary residents of Sochi. According to Russian Government website Zakupki, which details financial transactions at all levels of Russian government, the Sochi administration has distributed some 32,628.600 rubles (US$988,788) to 17 media organisations, including four television channels, six newspapers, one magazine, three radio stations, and one informational agency. It is not clear what form the funds took.
Aleksandr Valov, founder of BlogSochi, which seeks to document the impact of the Games on Sochi’s residents, explains “One begins to understand why Sochi media only talk about the government’s achievements and keep silent about the problems. The popular saying ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’ comes to mind.”
International journalists covering Sochi have also been closely curtailed. Police from the Russian Republic of Adygea neighboring Sochi repeatedly stopped, detained, and threatened a two-person crew from Norway’s TV2- the country’s official broadcaster of the Olympic Games. At every stop and in detention, officials questioned the journalists aggressively about their work plans in Sochi and other areas, their sources, and in some cases about their personal lives, educational backgrounds, and religious beliefs. In several instances they denied the journalists contact with the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow. One official threatened to jail them both, the journalists told Human Rights Watch. Dutch photojournalist Rob Hornstra was denied a Russian visa in an apparent attempt to stop him from doing further work in the turbulent North Caucasus, and American journalist David Satter was forcibly expelled from the country in December.
Since beginning his first term as president in 2000, Vladimir Putin has carefully controlled his media presence, closing a number of independent media outlets and amalgamating others with state bodies, whilst tightly controlling the presence of foreign media. Professor Owen Johnson teaches at the School of Journalism at Indiana University, and has researched the role of media in Russia intensively. He offers a simple explanation for the recent expulsions ‘”While it would seem that this runs counter to other more positive actions by President Putin recently, this might be designed to make visiting journalists more cautious,” Johnson said. “Putin is less concerned about world public opinion than he is about his continued support in Russia.”
Domestic attitudes to Putin are changing fast, according to Mikhail Dmitriev, former director of Russia’s State Run Centre for Strategic Research. Over the past year discontent in the country at large has deepened and broadened, spreading across all social groups and ages. While support for Putin is stable in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where incomes remain high, fluctuating fortunes in Russia’s rural regions is starting to generate distrust. Dmitriev said the latest focus groups show that Putin is less associated with stability and more with uncertainty. His past achievements are becoming a distant memory, and his recent stunts, such as flying with cranes or diving for ancient amphorae, merely cause irritation.
The Sochi Games, Putin explained in a conference with journalists, will be an important global symbol of Russian achievement and resurgence. For Putin, well-managed domestic media coverage seems an important strategic component of his long term success and survival.
This article was originally posted on 5 February 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
22 Jan 2014 | Magazine, Volume 42.04 Winter 2013
Pussy Riot supporters prevented from praying for Putin’s resignation outside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (Image: Anton Belitskiy / Demotix)
Two issues preoccupying post- Soviet society are a wish to oppose outside influences (mainly from the West), and to resist aggressive behaviour in matters of religion. It is not difficult to point out inconsistencies and contradictions in these approaches, but more germane is the fact that both have survived, if in modified form, to the present day. When the possibility of further restrictions on freedom of conscience are being discussed, a key topic is invariably the need to protect society from the “expansionism” of new religious movements and radical Islam.
The arrests of members of the Pussy Riot punk band after their performance outside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour proved a powerful catalyst for both these concerns. The protest was seen as a frontal attack on “tradition” by “pro-Western forces” (the actual point Pussy Riot wanted to make was neither here nor there), and as an attack on the religious sensibilities of the “Orthodox majority”. The reaction was accordingly heavy-handed, including not only imprisonment of two members of the group, but also the passing of a law criminalising the “offending of believers’ religious sensibilities”, often referred to as the “blasphemy” law.
The legislative proposal was introduced in September 2012 and became law in August 2013 but has not yet been enforced anywhere. There may be at least two reasons for this. First, many laws that are aimed at NGOs, protesters or what is seen as the “opposition” have either been applied much less rigorously than expected or not at all. The authorities have chosen not to resort to wholesale repression, preferring intimidation. Second, the Russian state and its political elite are still very secular and feel uncomfortable about what is widely regarded as a law against blasphemy.
Strictly speaking, this is not a law against blasphemy, unlike, for example, similar legislation in Italy. The offence is not against religious doctrine, the deity, or things considered holy. Desecration of sacred objects is an offence not under the Russian Criminal Code, but under the code of administrative offences, which means it is seen as less serious. Offending religious sensibilities or beliefs is a crime in the penal codes of several European countries, but the European Court of Human Rights (and, following it, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) has consistently confirmed that a distinction needs to be made between offending sensibilities and inciting hatred.
In Russia today there are still attempts to bring charges of incitement to hatred under Article 282 of the criminal code in incidents that the law enforcement agencies, victims or others might reasonably have been expected to regard as mere offences against religious sensibilities. In a few cases, charges have been brought and, in fewer still, these charges have led to convictions. From interviews with law enforcement officers and representatives of various religious organisations, it is evident that numerous individuals and organisations that feel they have been offended on religious grounds appeal to the police and prosecutor’s office to institute criminal proceedings under Article 282. These requests are almost invariably turned down, and this is not a matter of officials taking sides: they are simply reluctant to institute proceedings on a shaky legal basis, except when that is in their own self-interest. They will do so if there is pressure on them from above, or if they face a pressing need to meet some target.
The addition of this new article to the criminal code, if it is not repealed, will lead sooner or later to its being enforced, and the main source of litigation will be complaints from numerous indignant parties. Demands for charges to be brought rained down upon the prosecutor’s office and police even before the amendments became law. It is important to recognise that the problem is not only repressive intentions on the part of the authorities, but also the repressive instincts of Russian citizens. Representatives of a wide range of community interest groups (though, thankfully, by no means all), including a number of minorities, constantly demand that criminal prosecution be the main way to influence those who cause them offence.
If the system does start enforcing this law, freedom of conscience will come under immense new pressure because of the likelihood of the sheer volume of litigation. Enforcement is likely to be highly selective, because a law of this kind can only be applied selectively. It will be manifestly discriminatory, in accordance with some individuals’ personal preferences and depending on the government’s latest priorities. Finally, it will be completely chaotic, because complaints will come in from all directions and there is nobody remotely qualified to assess their merits.
We can hope, of course, that the new article may yet be removed from the criminal code, but the chances of that are slim. The fact that it is there in the first place results from a consistent trend towards restricting freedom of expression in matters of religion, justified on the basis of the need to maintain “religious peace”. There are two main aspects to this laudable aim, and they enjoy widespread support. The first is safeguarding national security against the preaching of terrorism motivated by religion. The second is to safeguard national security against internal, particularly ethnic, conflicts, which are seen as often being fuelled by religion.
These two security aspects were major reasons for the introduction, in 2002-2007, of the current legislation to counteract “extremism”. This legislation is used extensively against violent racist groups, but also against sundry ideological minorities, which by no means espouse violence or pose a serious, or indeed any, threat to national security.
Abuse of this legislation is made possible by its imprecise wording, which we also find in respect to the new law to protect religious sensibilities. This inevitably leads to arbitrary application and, specifically, to exploitation for political purposes. There have been numerous instances of this, but let us focus on just three. Among the first major “anti-extremist” trials associated with religion were those targeting contemporary art exhibitions at the Andrey Sakharov Museum, which presaged the Pussy Riot case. Also, in 2011, a journalist was convicted for making rude remarks about believers in general, and the clergy in particular, even though his was not by any means a high profile protest and could not be represented as involving incitement to hatred against any group. Lastly, over several years there has been a serious campaign of criminal prosecution against people who read or distribute the works of a Sufi teacher, the late Said Nursi, even though neither he nor his Russian followers have links to terrorism, or engage in conduct which might constitute a threat to society.
In the case of the Sakharov museum exhibitions, the general public could at least understand more clearly what was going on. Some might consider the exhibition a profound artistic meditation on relations between the church and society; others might see the exhibits as an amusing send-up of the church and/or orthodoxy; some might consider it a send-up in bad taste or even an attack on the church, but within acceptable limits of freedom of expression; others, however, were determined to prove that the exhibition was a criminal incitement to hatred of orthodoxy and Orthodox Christians.
In the case of the persecution of followers of Said Nursi, the general public know nothing about the subject and must either just believe or disbelieve what they are told by the security services, believe or disbelieve what is said by Muslim leaders defending those being persecuted, or simply turn and look the other way. Most people choose the last option, including a majority of journalists,which means a majority of citizens, even those who take an interest in social matters, know nothing about these prosecutions.
Our citizens’ understanding of the issues around freedom of conscience is fragmentary. Most are far more concerned about conflicts over the balance between the slow-but-sure process of de-secularisation and the constitutionally guaranteed secular nature of the state. There are controversies over the presence of religion in schools, about the erection of Orthodox churches and mosques (although in the case of mosques the main cause of dissension is racism), and about various symbols of the cosy relationship between church and state. The real-life problems facing religious groups and, more generally, people expressing an opinion about religion, get forgotten.
These problems are legion. The most acute in recent years have arisen from improper application of anti-extremism legislation, but there are also the more “ordinary” problems, like refusals to release building land for places of worship and systematic campaigns of defamation. In a number of cases, like that of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, all these problems come together.
The Federal List of Extremist Materials has, however, excited the public’s interest by its scale and, even by Russian standards, sheer absurdity. The list can be found on the website of the Ministry of Justice and itemises materials banned from mass circulation. The ban is imposed by courts at the insistence of local prosecutors, who must satisfy the court that the material contains elements that can be construed as constituting “extremist activity”. This is usually incitement to hatred of some sort, impugning the dignity of a group, asserting the superiority or inferiority of a particular religion, and so forth. The whole process is quite remarkably ineffective and does not stand up to scrutiny. Most of the materials the list is seeking to ban cannot be identified from the titles given and, no less problematically, banning them does not in strictly legal terms mean they cannot be re-published, because a new court case would be needed to re-establish the identity of the materials.
A great many of the banned books, websites, videos and material involves religion in one way or another. Many are jihadist texts openly calling for terrorism or other forms of violence, but many have nothing prejudicial in them: perhaps at most a claim of the superiority of one set of beliefs over others, to which texts of Jehovah’s Witnesses are prone. There are works by Muslim authors well known for their contribution to jihadist ideology, but on topics that are of no concern to national security (most commonly, on aspects of Sharia law). Finally, a number of texts have found their way on to the list purely by chance, having been confiscated from some “wrong-thinking” individual. This explains the presence of medieval treatises by the likes of the Persian mystic al Ghazali. In 2013 there was even a ban imposed on one of the most popular translations of the Quran.
The absurdity of such methods of “fighting extremism” has obliged even President Putin, at a recent meeting with muftis in Ufa in Bashkortostan, to acknowledge that there are problems with the current approach to banning religious materials. Alas, there is no sign of willingness to review the methods of fighting extremism more generally, or those aspects of them that most blatantly violate freedom of conscience.
Translated by Arch Tait
This article appears in the Winter 2013 issue of Index on Censorship magazine.
14 Jan 2014 | News and features, Russia
Fielding calls in the back of a London black cab, American journalist David Satter is a busy man.
Satter, who has reported on Soviet and Russian affairs for nearly four decades, was appointed an adviser to US government-funded Radio Liberty in May 2013. In September, he moved to Moscow. But at Christmas, he was informed he was no longer welcome in the country — the first time this has happened to an American reporter since the cold war.
Since Monday night, when the news of his expulsion from Russia broke, he’s been talking pretty much non stop, attempting to explain the manoeuvres which led to him being exiled from his Moscow home.
A statement issued by the Russian foreign ministry claims that Satter had violated Russian law by entering the country on 21 November, but not applying for a visa until 26 November.
Satter dismisses this as “nonsense”, saying he had been assured that a visa that had expired on 21 November would be renewed the following day, with no gap. As it happened, the visa was not renewed on time, “in order to create a pretext”, he tells Index.
To cut a short cut through a labyrinthine tale of bureaucracy: Satter says he left Russia in order to gain a new entry visa, which he could then exchange for a residency visa as an accredited correspondent for Radio Liberty.
He was repeatedly told this visa had been secured. Eventually, on 25 December, he was told that he had a number for a visa, but not the necessary invitation to accompany it. “Kafkaesque”, he calls it. The embassy official had never heard of this happening before. And, as Satter points out, he would not have been issued a number for a new visa in December if it had not been approved.
Eventually, he was told to speak to an official named as Alexei Gruby, who told him that “the competent organs” (code, Satter says, for the FSB) had decided that his presence in Russia was not desirable, language normally reserved for spies. “And now we see I have been barred for five years.”
“The point is, I urge you not to get caught up in their bureaucratic intrigues…the real reason was given to me, in Kiev, on 25 December.”
Is this just another example of FSB muscle flexing?
“Possibly. I’ve known them for a number of years, and I can’t always understand what they’re doing. Usually what they do is not very good…”
This is not Satter’s first brush with the Russian secret services. In a long career with the Financial Times, Radio Liberty and other outlets, he has experience of the KGB and its sucessor. “In 1979, they tried to expel me, accusing me of hooliganism. They once organised a provocation in one of the Baltic republics in which they posed as dissidents. I spent a couple of days with them, thinking I was with dissidents – I was really with the KGB. It’s a long history. It’s in my movie. We showed it in the Maidan [December’s anti-government protests in Ukraine]. Maybe they didn’t like that.”
Satter’s film, the Age of Delirium, is an account of the fall of the Soviet Union.
Is this expulsion a personal thing? Or a move against Radio Liberty? “It’s hard to say whether it’s me, or Radio Liberty, or both.”
Satter is concerned at leaving behind research materials and belongings in Moscow, saying it is likely his son, a London-based journalist, will have to go to Russia to collect them “unless they reverse their decision, which I hope they do”.
In spite of the recent amnesty that saw Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina released from prison, as well as opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the diagnosis for free speech in Russia is not good. Alyokhina dismissed her release as a “hoax”, designed to prove Putin’s power. Meanwhile, state broadcaster RIA Novosti has been dissolved and reimagined as “Rossia Segodnya” (“Russia Today” – no coincidence it bears the same name as the notorious English language propaganda station), with many fearing closer Kremlin control.
One Russian journalist I spoke to felt that, ahead of the Sochi games, the expulsion of Satter is a message to all journalists: no matter how experienced, well-known, and well-supported you are, you are still at the mercy of the authorities.
This article was posted on 14 Jan 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
20 Dec 2013 | News and features, Politics and Society, Ukraine
(Photo: Anatolii Stepanov / Demotix)
The coverage of Ukrainian protests in the Russian media suggests a centralised anti-EU message and has provoked outrage in Kiev.
At first, Russian TV channels appeared to broadcast inaccuracies only on the numbers taking part in the demonstrations. Despite clear evidence on the ground that tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands were taking part, Russian reporters described scenes as “a few hundred protesters.”
Russia’s state-run First Channel then chose to dramatise Ukraine’s alleged descent into anarchy with a montage depicting combat scenes from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, accompanied by a morbid musical soundtrack.
Komsomolskaya Pravda, a popular Russian daily, led on Tuesday with “Ukraine may split into several parts” with an illustrative map to depict the predicted chaos. The next day, a headline read “Western Ukraine is preparing for civil war.”
Overall – the message from the state-controlled Russian media seems to have been – “Ukraine is suffering at the fate of dangerous opposition militants.”
Putin has lent his weight to the propaganda, describing unrest in Kiev as “more of a pogrom than a revolution” and calling protesters “well-prepared and trained militant groups.”
“Ukraine is like a liner going in a circle,” commented a high-profile Russian journalist this week. “The passengers are calmed by the fact that Europe is near, there is not far to go. In reality the economic collapse of the whole country lies ahead…Passengers will be hurt. Some will not survive.”
The journalist quoted is Dmitry Kiselyov, who Vladimir Putin recently named as head of a re-launched Russia Today — as part of the take-over of previous state broadcaster RIA Novosti.
The shutdown of RIA Novosti was seen as a further degradation in the impartiality of the Russian media — despite being state-owned it had offered some balanced reporting on Russian domestic and foreign policy.
Media analysts in Russia have commented that Kiseylov’s appointment to Russia Today, now the sole government news agency, may have derived from his loyal allegiance to Putin and his ability to propagandise in his favour.
In support of recent anti-homosexual legislation passed by the Russian government, Kiselyov had commented.
“Fining gays is not sufficient -– they should not be allowed to give blood, or sperm and in case of a car accident, their hearts should be burnt or buried as useless”
Kiselyov’s assessment on Maidan went further than his dubious ship analogy — suggesting on his weekly TV show that Sweden, Lithuania and Poland may be manipulating events behind the scenes as revenge for a battle the Russians won in the early 18th century, a battle that happened to be fought in present-day Ukraine.
“It looked like thirst for revenge for Poltava,” argued Kiseylov, citing the name of a battle that took place in 1709.
He then labelled Ukrainian opposition leader and boxer Vitali Klitschko, and his brother Vladimir, as “gay icons,” before describing the “ancient African military techniques,” which the protesters were apparently employing.
He also accused protesters of aggressively firing tear gas at police (when multiple Ukrainian and European media sources confirmed the opposite was correct), and said that opposition leaders had brought students to the protest as sacrificial lambs for the security forces. In fact, police had gone out and savagely beaten groups of students hours before.
Finally, he describes the “writers” of the revolution as a Ukrainian-American-European conspiracy, against Russia.
Skewed Russian coverage has not gone unnoticed in Ukraine. A journalist interrupted a live broadcast from Rossiya 24 – handing over a fake “Oscar” statue in recognition of the “lies and nonsense” that was being reported.
Before being pushed off frame, the Ukrainain Vitaly Sedyuk was able to blurt out “We love Russians but after the way you covered events….”
The Russian reporter ended his piece still holding the fake Oscar statue in his hand.
In contrast to relatively objective reporting in Ukraine, the reporting of Kiseylov and other Russians, combined with a media landscape which has now lost most of its independent voices, indicates the strongest move yet towards total state control of the Russian media.
This article was published on 20 Dec, 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
