Ten years have passed since ruining of the private independent
television channel and dissolution of the team of 1journalists
who had been showing to the country every day how important
the profession of a journalist is for the society and freedom
of speech. On April 14, 2001, the management of the NTV channel
was completely changed. And virtually from this moment censorship
has been widely exercised in Russia.
We regard this – transfer of the property title of the channel
– as one of the key events of 2000s. I think it became the
“point of no return” in the development of Vladimir Putin’s
system, and passing of this point determined the country development
for 2000s and even up to the present, with all the events,
including the tragedy of hostages in the Dubrovka theatre
(the so-called Nord-Ost case), ruining of YUKOS, a schoolchildren
taken hostages in Beslan, North Ossetia, abolishing of gubernatorial
elections, election fraud, “amending” of the Constitution,
the “successor” operation in transferring of the presidential
power and breaking of peaceful rallies and demonstrations…
Everything began with the ruining of the NTV channel.
And the most important thing: everything could have been
if not stopped but least turned in such a way so that the
authorities would have never forget about the civil society
and its view.
Instead of gathering (as we are doing now) the remnants of
the civil consciousness and cry about the political passivity
of the nation.
That reality has turned into our present because in a key
moment of that fight the defenders of the NTV channel found
themselves in minority even among “liberals” – those who today
have been calling themselves the fighters against the regime.
Then they were the regime’s handymen, that is why they do
not like to remember those events today.
But we are recollecting all this today – who was fighting
and, most importantly, for what.
These people were killing NTV and the freedom of
speech:
Quotations
(in Russian), to read the quotations press on the pictures.
Photo: (from left to
right)
1st row: Boris Gryzlov, then
Minister of Interior (now Speaker of the parliament); Boris
Jordan, newly appointed CEO of NTV; Mikhail Kasyanov, then
Prime Minister
2nd row: Alfred Kokh, then General
Director of Gazprom-Media, appointed Chair of the Board of
the 'new" NTV; Mikhail Lesin, then Minister of TV, Radio
and Communications; Dmitry Medvedev, then Deputy Chair of
the Board, Gazprom, now President of Russia
3rd row: Boris Nemtsov, then
co-Chair of the Union of Right-Wing Forces; Vladimir Putin,
then President of Russia, now Prime Minister; Anatoly Chubais,
then head of RAO UES, now Director General of Russian Nanotechnologies
Corporation.
These people were defending NTV and
the freedom of speech:
Quotations
(in Russian), to read the quotations press on the pictures.
Photo: (from left to right)
1st row: Alexei Venediktov then
and now journalist, Editor-in-Chief of the Echo Moskvi radio
station; Sergei Ivanenko, then Deputy Head of the YABLOKO
faction in the State Duma, now member of YABLOKO Bureau; Vladimir
Lukin, then MP from the YABLOKO faction, now Russia's Ombudsman;
Sergei Mitrokhin, then MP from the YABLOKO faction, now Chair
of the YABLOKO party
2nd row: Eugenia Albats, then
journalist, now Editor of New Times; Vladimir Pozner, journalist;
Tatyna Tarasova, Russian figure skating coach; Irina Khakomada,
then Co-Chair of the Union of RIght-Wing Forces
3rd row: Viktor Shenderovich,
journalist; Sergei Yushnkov, then MP and co-Chair of the Liberal
Russia movement (murdered in 2003); Grigory Yavlinsky, then
Chair of the YABLOKO faction in the State Duma, now member
of YABLOKO's Political Council; Igor Yakovenko, head of the
Journalists Union.
See also:
The
NTV Case
Human
Rights
Freedom
of Speech
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