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Russia saw a further deterioration in press freedom
in 2003. The
authorities exploited the public media during legislative elections and
obstructed free coverage of the campaign to guarantee victory, particularly
in some republics in the Caucuses. A journalist was kidnapped in Chechnya
and another was sentenced to a prison term for defamation.
Many observers reported a further setback for democracy in the Russian
Federation in 2003. The year ended with the election, on 7 December of
a
federal Duma dominated by the party of Vladimir Putin, Edinaya Rossiya,
followed by the communist party and two nationalist parties, the opposition
having been totally wiped out. During the election campaign the authorities
made wide use of administrative resources to serve their interests. From
August onwards, the Kremlin resumed its grip of the polling institute
VTsIOM. The state channels RTR and public ORT openly backed the pro-Kremlin
party.
In June, the Council of the Federation adopted amendments to electoral
law
that, due to their failure to provide a precise definition of electoral
propaganda, prevented free election coverage by the media. A few days
before the start of the official campaign these amendments were ruled
anti-constitutional.
In some regions with few democratic credentials, the authorities did
not trouble themselves about using legal means to harass the opposition
or independent media. In the republic of Bashkiria, the independent press
was reduced to virtually nothing by the yearend. At the beginning of autumn
and few weeks before the election of the pro-Russian administrator, Akhmat
Kadyrov to the presidency in Chechnya, the situation worsened still further
in this war-torn Caucasus region, with a forced takeover by interior ministry
troops of the Chechen radio/television and the eight newspapers still
published in Grozny. On 4 July, Ali Astamirov, correspondent
for Agence France-Presse in Ingushetia and Chechyna was kidnapped
by armed men in Nazran, capital of Ingushetia. As of 1st January 2004,
the identity of his kidnappers was still unknown and nobody knew where
the journalist was being held nor his state of health.
In January, the military journalist Grigory Pasko,
who was serving a sentence of four years in a penal colony in the Far
East, was freed for good conduct having served two-thirds of his sentence.
Convicted of high treason, he had for a long time investigated ecological
problems caused by the dismantling of the Pacific fleet. As a result of
several cases, the authorities continued in 2003, to consider environmental
questions as a taboo subject. In August, another journalist, German
Galkin, based in Cheliabinsk in the Urals, was sentenced to one
year of hard labour for defamation of two deputy governors but released
on appeal. Under Article 130 of the criminal code, insult is still punishable
by a sentence of up to one year hard labour and libel (Article 129) by
a jail term of up to three years.
Five journalists killed
Five journalists were killed in 2003, but as at 1st January 2004, it
was
not possible to say whether their deaths were linked to their professional
work.
On 18 April 2003, Dmitri Shvets, 37, joint owner, deputy
managing director and founder of the local television channel TV-21, was
gunned down by three shots fired at him as he got out of his car outside
his media offices in northeastern Murmansk. His killer managed to escape,
dropping his weapon near the body. In founding TV-21 in 1990, Shvets gave
birth to the region's first independent television channel. He acquired
a major political role in the region, mainly thanks to TV-21. Shortly
before he was murdered, it had broadcast several programmes critical of
the mayor of Murmansk and candidates to the 2004 municipal elections.
Journalists at TV-21 said they have received verbal threats, particularly
from one of the candidates for mayor, Andrei Gorchkov. He had warned journalists
that he would take legal action against them if they broadcast an interview
that he did not like. Following a complaint from the local journalists'
union, on 14 March, the prosecutor-general got involved in the case. Shvets
was political advisor to regional governor Yuri Evdokimov. A well-known
businessman in Murmansk, he also owned several shops and was joint owner
of a night-club.
Yuri Shshekochikhin,
deputy editor of the independent daily Novaya Gazeta and deputy
for the opposition party Yabloko, died in a Moscow hospital on 2 July
eight days after being admitted in a coma. The precise cause of his death
is unknown. He could have been poisoned. The journalist, who was investigating
corruption at the highest level of government and also covered Chechnya
had been threatened several times. As of 1st January 2004, there was no
evidence to show that he was murdered.
On 18 July, Alikhan Guliev was shot dead by two bullets
in the back fired by an unidentified gunmen as he entered his apartment
in the north of Moscow. An investigation was launched. Guliev, who worked
occasionally for television channel TV Tsenter and the daily Kommersant,
had been covering the conflict in Chechnya since his arrival in the capital
in 2002. He previously worked in Ingushetia, where he worked for the Ingushetia
public GTRK channel and for the weekly Severny Kavkaz. During the 16 April
2002 presidential elections in Ingushetia, the journalist made a complaint
as a private citizen for violation of election law against Khamsat Guseriev,
the interior minister and candidate supported by the former president,
Ruslan Aushev. Shortly afterwards, on 27 March 2002, unidentified gunmen
shot at his vehicle. His complaint led to the candidate being ruled as
ineligible, the Supreme Court ruling on 5 April that Guseriev should have
resigned from his ministerial post if he wanted to campaign for election.
The journalist had also accused him in an article published in December
2001 in Severny Kavkaz, of having used public funds for his campaign.
To escape threats against him after the elections, won by a Putin protege
Murat Ziazikov, the journalist decided to leave to live in Moscow.
Editor of the regional daily Toliattinskoye Obosrenie, Alexei
Sidorov, was stabbed in the car park of his apartment building
in Togliatti, Samara region on 9 October. The journalist, who was 31,
died shortly afterwards in the arms of his wife. The murder weapon was
a "zatochka", a home-made knife typically made in prison from
a piece of metal. Sidorov had succeeded Valery Ivanov,
after his murder in similar circumstances on 29 April 2002. He had set
up a partnership with the auto-makers AvtoVaz, economic powerhouse of
the region, which backed the newspaper financially. Before becoming editor
he was an investigative journalist for Toliattinskoye Obosrenie. Just
a few weeks before his death, he had resumed research into the criminal
underworld, but neither the newspaper nor his wife knew exactly what he
was working on. Between 15 and 17 October, several contradictory official
statements were put out about the arrest of one or more suspects. The
chief suspect under arrest was named on 18 October. Held since 12 October,
Evgeny Mayninguer, a welder from Togliatti, was accused of having killed
the journalist after a row. The accused reportedly asked the journalist,
whose path he crossed by chance to lend him some money to buy Vodka. A
row break out when the journalist refused and the accused man supposedly
stabbed him several times before fleeing and throwing away the murder
weapon.
Two others suspects were reportedly arrested but their identities were
not
revealed. Mayninguer, who initially confessed but then retracted at the
beginning of November, said that police had put pressure on him to force
a
confession. The lawyer for the family, Karen Nersisyan, believed that
the
authorities insisted on Mayninger's guilt to spare themselves the trouble
of having to find the real motives for the murder. Nersisyan said he had
been prevented by police from questioning two witnesses who confirmed
the
suspect's alibi.
The editorial team at Toliattinskoye Obosrenie believed the murder was
linked to Sidorov's journalistic work and did not accept the version of
a
random murder. The day after the killing, the newspaper carried an article
exploring four hypotheses. The first two related to articles published
in
June and July 2003 : One related to a conflict between a criminal Igor
Fillipov and a Samara businessman, Vladimir Zaharchenko ; the other was
linked to a criminal gang controlled by local hoodlum Igor Sirotenko.
Fillipov might have wanted revenge because the newspaper reported his
attempted attack against his adversary and that some of his property
disappeared after police questioned him. As for Sirotenko, he had
threatened to lodge a complaint following an article published about him
and demanded an apology. The two criminals could also have got together
to
eliminate the journalist. The third hypothesis was that Sidorov could
have
had important information, such as the hiding place of wanted criminal,
Alexander Belyakin. Finally, Toliattinskoye Obosrenie thought the murder
could be linked to the ownership of the newspaper, which had turned down
a
purchase bid.
During a reconstrution on 17 October, the daily's journalists noted
that the accused man made a mistake in identifying the scene of the crime.
Moreover his family made several statements to the effect that the accused
was not generally aggressive and that he had only left home on that day
around 10pm, by which time the murder had already been committed. The
journalist's colleagues were convinced that Sidorov was not the kind of
man to engage in the kind of quarrel described by the investigators. On
25 December, Petr Babenko, editor of the weekly Liskinskaya
Gazeta, was found dead with 15 knife wounds in a forest near the town
of Liosk, Voronezh region, close to the Ukrainian border. On the evening
of 24 December, the journalist had left work to meet "someone important",
his wife said. An investigation was launched.
New information about a journalist killed in 1994
The Supreme Court on 27 May 2003 quashed a 26 June 2002 acquittal of
six people previously convicted of murdering Dmitri Kholodov,
of the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets. The military collegium of the Supreme
court ruled that the lower court had not taken into account all the facts
of the prosecution case. The journalist, who had been investigating corruption
in the Russian Army, was killed in October 1994 by an exploding briefcase
that had been supposed to contain official documents. The newspaper's
editor immediately pointed the finger at the defence ministry's counter-espionage
services and the defence minister, General Pavel Grachev. But no direct
proof was found to implicate the minister directly. The trial opened in
November 2000. The six accused were former intelligence chief of airborne
troops, Colonel Pavel Popovskikh, parachute unit commander, Vladimir Morosov,
two of his deputies, Alexander Soroka et Konstantin Mirzaiants, deputy
head of a security agency providing body guards, Alexander Kapuntsov,
and a former officer turned businessman, Konstantin Barkovski....
See also:
the original at
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10229
Freedom of Speech
and Media Law in Russia
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