21 Oct 10 | Uncategorized
German publishers Axel Springer has announced the closure of Russian Newsweek, one of the few independent national current affairs publications left in the country.
Axel Springer say the move is solely commercial, but some at Russian Newsweek feel that politics has played a part, with authorities resenting the magazine’s staff going about their business of investigating and reporting stories:
“If you ask me what could irritate the authorities about the Russian NEWSWEEK’s coverage, I will tell you: everything,” says Mikhail Zygar, NEWSWEEK RUSSIA’s news editor.
One of NEWSWEEK RUSSIA’s biggest scoops—and one that earned it the lasting enmity of at least one powerful faction in the Kremlin—was about the family origins of chief ideologue and deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov. In 2005 the magazine revealed that his father, Andarbek Danilbekovich Dudayev, was an ethnic Chechen, and that Surkov had taken steps to obscure his family origins. “Surkov was angry when we published our story from Chechnya with photographs of his Chechen family,” says Leonid Parfenov, who was editor of NEWSWEEK RUSSIA at the time. “I had to explain to him that he could not keep his Chechen background secret.”
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19 Oct 10 | Index Index, minipost
Microsoft is extending its program of giving free software licences to non-profit organisations. The initiative was first applied to Russia, after it was discovered that authorities were using software piracy inquiries as a method of suppressing independent media outlets and advocacy groups. The program will now include 500,000 NGOs in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, China, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Prior to the announcement NGOs could only obtain a free licence if they were aware of the program and followed the necessary procedure. According to Microsoft’s official blog announcement, the unilateral licence will last until 2012.
14 Oct 10 | Index Index, minipost
The editor of the vesti.uz website, Russian Vladimir Berezovskiy, has been found guilty of slander and insult and pardoned without sentencing by Tashkent’s Yakkasaray district court.
Berezovskiy believes the case against him was cooked up and the trial has been accompanied by numerous violations. For example, Justice Nodyr Akrabov barred Danis Bashirov, an official from the Russian embassy in Uzbekistan, from the hearing, saying the diplomat needed permission from the Supreme Court.
During the hearing Berezovskiy’s lawyer Sergei Mayorov had to challenge the court as it had rejected several important motions from the defence.
07 Oct 10 | Uncategorized
Most Russian newspapers, liberal and conservative, covered the anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder today. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a liberal independent newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta, the government’s mouthpiece, and the liberal Moscow News, along with other left and right-wing papers, gave the story the same amount of coverage and reflected similar viewpoints.
Only Kommersant, a liberal newspaper, and Politkovskaya’s own Novaya Gazeta stood out from the rest. Kommersant gave more column inches to the anniversary and published the sceptical comment of the senior editor of Novaya Gazeta, Sergei Sokolov: “I do not think that the investigators have found out anything new, and even if they did, it is in their interests to keep quiet.”
Sokolov’s cynicism contrasts with the reporting in the rest of the press. The investigation into Politkovskaya’s murder has now been extended to next February. While police agents in the rest of the media are reported to have made progress and found new evidence, Sokolov is one of the few critical voices. “The ones who we think have something to do with the case have been investigated already, years ago, before the release of the murder suspects.”
