GLASNOST DEFENSE FOUNDATION DIGEST No. 448

TOPIC OF THE WEEK
Rallies in memory of Anna Politkovskaya held across Russia

EVENT OF THE WEEK
Victory gained, but under-the-rug struggle continues

RUSSIA
1. European Court passes decision in defense of newspaper Arsenyevskiye Vesti
2. Moscow Region. Attack on journalist
3. Chelyabinsk Region. Information blockade: loyalty tests for one and all
4. Moscow. Reporter admitted to open court hearing by pure chance
5. Volgograd. Journalists unlawfully detained in district leader’s office
6. Astrakhan. Reporter banned from polling station
7. Republic of Karelia. Uneasy conscience betrays itself?
8. Republic of Dagestan. Cameras of two crews of TV reporters confiscated

GLASNOST DEFENSE FOUNDATION
Some statistics cited

OUR PUBLICATIONS
Further on freedom of expression

TOPIC OF THE WEEK

Rallies in memory of Anna Politkovskaya held across Russia

By Dmitry Florin,
GDF staff correspondent in Central Federal District

Three years have passed since Anna Politkovskaya was killed. This year’s rally in her memory in Moscow attracted twice as many people and was held in a half as large square as the previous one.

The square “kindly assigned” by the city authorities for the memorial event was too small for the gathering; people stood behind metal railings, on the roadway and street railway.

Alexei Simonov, Dmitry Muratov, Liya Akhedzhakova, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Sergey Kovalev, Viktor Shenderovich, Yuri Schmidt, Yevgenia Albats, Alexander Podrabinek and Yulia Kalinina addressed the crowd from the rostrum. Others showed their attitude by simply coming to pay tribute to the murdered journalist. One celebrity, who was marking his birthday on the day of Politkovskaya’s death, had invited prominent authors to join the festivities. Some – but not all –chose to go there instead of the mourning rally. Naming those who did not might do them an ill turn; that might be worse than squealing.

When people started chanting “Down with the KGB rule!”, a group of policemen rushed from the metro station Chistiye Prudy towards the passage into the rally square. But they were not given the go-ahead command: with so many foreign reporters around, that might trigger a scandal. The national, domestic press was not represented at all – with the sole exception of Russia Today, evidently to show off to the world that this is a “pluralist” country…
 
People were holding Anna’s photo portraits and flowers – a whole sea of flowers. There were posters with portraits of other murdered journalists – Markelov, Baburova, Estemirova… As Alexei Simonov noted after a minute of silence, “If we announced a minute of silence for each journalist killed since 1993, we would stand silently for 5 hours.”

Liya Akhedzhakova said when she had read Anna Politkovskaya’s last article in Novaya Gazeta, she had thought to herself: “God, they will surely kill her!” And Anna was indeed killed in her apartment block in Lesnaya Street three days later. Lyudmila Alexeyeva said: “We come here for the umpteenth time with photo pictures of different people – journalists killed long ago and recently. How long will we have to come here again and again?” Nearly all speakers pointed to the fact that Anna’s murder still remained undisclosed – just as the killings of all the other journalists whose portraits rally participants were holding on October 7.

“This crime will only be solved when the killers become unrelated to the ruling circles,” Viktor Shendorevich said. Dmitry Muratov observed: “If the killers are finally named, that will do Russia even more harm than the murder itself.” More than once, speakers raised a question doomed to remain unanswered: “Why does it so happen each time that a journalist criticizing the authorities gets killed?”

That seemed to be the main point: they have been killing us by the score but no one has been held liable for that.

We came to Anna’s house in Lesnaya Street. Police cordons were already there. The sidewalk near the entrance was too narrow, and people began stepping back onto the roadway. The policemen refrained from pushing them back to the entrance in front of foreign TV cameras.

Again, there were lots of flowers, photo portraits and burning candles. Passers-by paused to ask what was going on: “Politkovskaya? Oh yeah, I remember that name… How long ago? Three years? And the killers haven’t been found? Well, that’s what I thought…”

That’s what we all thought, actually. One thing is unclear: why journalists continue to be killed – not for mercenary ends, not as a result of political intrigues, not at war… Or is there a war going on, after all?

Lyudmila Alexeyeva said she believed a time would come when we would stop coming there carrying photo portraits of murdered journalists. But she would not live long enough to see that, she said. What about us, the younger generation?


P. S. Actions in memory of A. Politkovskaya were held also in St. Petersburg, Kirov, Barnaul, Voronezh, Kurgan, Vladimir, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov and Ulyanovsk.

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EVENT OF THE WEEK

Victory gained, but under-the-rug struggle continues

By Vladimir Golubev,
GDF staff correspondent in Ural Federal District

The situation around two official warnings issued to the Ural news agency URA.ru by RosSvyazKomNadzor [RSKN, federal service supervising the sphere of public communications] has called broad public repercussions and created a meaningful precedent as regards media-government relations. RSKN officials charged URA.ru with publishing extremist texts – and this despite the fact that signs of extremism had actually been found not in journalistic reports but in comments left by unidentified persons on the agency’s web forum.

The case drew close attention from the Grand Jury of the Sverdlovsk branch of the Journalists’ Union of Russia; the GDF President Alexei Simonov who went to the URA.ru head office to get first-hand information from journalists; and the RF Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin. Finally, on October 6 the media community was shown that justice can well be fought for, and won: the Presidium of the RF Supreme Court of Arbitration and its Chairman Anton Ivanov went to the URA.ru side in its protracted litigation with the repressive-minded RSKN officials and assigned the case for review.

The decision set a precedent for all the media. “We got what we wanted,” URA.ru editor Aksana Panova commented. “We were Russia’s trailblazers in fighting for the journalists’ right to challenge unjustified warnings, and we won. Life is changing for the better, after all, and it is good to know that a team of young lawyers is capable of putting effective checks on officials’ arbitrary actions.”

Having considered the case, the Supreme Court Presidium found itself wishing to put a number of new, case-related, questions to RSKN. In what way is the issuance of warnings regulated, generally? (As it turned out, there are no rules for that in effect at all.) Why did RSKN decide to check the performance of that particular news agency? (There had been a prompting phone call.) Why not notify the agency of the pending inspection or give it the opportunity to correct its mistakes prior to the issuance of the second warning? And so on, and so forth.

Meanwhile, the law enforcement agencies in Yekaterinburg have been busy checking who in particular called the Ural office of RSKN with instructions to start an inspection of URA.ru activities. This is an important point because, some web publications and a TV network said to be close to the office of President Medvedev’s Personal Envoy to the Ural Federal District have challenged the Supreme Arbitration Court decision of October 6 as one falling beyond its jurisdiction, sent the case to a general jurisdiction court and left the RSKN warnings in effect... The position of RosSvyazKomNadzor, as spelt out by RSKN assistant head Mikhail Vorobyov, is as follows: “Registration involves liability for breaches of the Media Law. This concerns not only journalists’ reports but also any other information posted on their sites, including web forum pages. The online media must independently control the content of their web forums.”

Clearly, the situation is absurd: any ill-wisher or a person hired for money is free today to enter the website of a web publication targeted for an attack, post a message with an unlawful content, and instantly send a report to the supervisory agencies: come on, react now!

So the struggle continues, and the Glasnost Defense Foundation will be closely watching the developments.

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RUSSIA

1. European Court passes decision in defense of newspaper Arsenyevskiye Vesti

By Anna Seleznyova,
GDF staff correspondent in Far Eastern Federal District

Seven and a half years have passed since the Vladivostok-based newspaper Arsenyevskiye Vesti (AV) published a series of articles by Tatyana Romanenko that really infuriated the judicial officials. It all began in the spring of 2002, after a group of district leaders complained to K. Pulikovsky, the RF President’s Personal Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District, about unlawful lumbering in their areas.

The complaint was read at a press conference at the Regional Press Institute in Vladivostok, mentioning the Maritime Judicial Department (MJD) of the RF Supreme Court among the organizations engaged in the unlawful felling of trees. Reports about the complaint were carried by two newspapers. The first, Utro Rossii, immediately received an MJD honor-and-dignity protection claim with a demand for moral damage compensation. The claim was soon heard in court and satisfied. The second newspaper, Arsenyevskiye Vesti, featured an article by Tatyana Romanenko, “The Rulers from the Forest”, with a quote from the complaint to the presidential envoy. Again, the reaction was instant: the MJD lodged a reputation-protection claim and demanded moral damage compensation. The newspaper followed by publishing the full text of the complaint – only to receive another legal claim, this time from MJD head V. Shulga in person, who accused AV of libel and of damaging his honor and dignity, and claimed moral damage compensation (although the newspaper had not mentioned a single name, not even Shulga’s). Naturally, AV lost all trials in the Maritime Territory but decided to continue fighting for justice. It asked for, and received, all the necessary legal assistance from the Glasnost Defense Foundation. The newspaper founders appealed to the RF Supreme Court and filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights about the breach of their right to receive information and express their views openly. The complaint was found acceptable but Russian representatives would keep saying in reply to each European Court inquiry that AV had inflicted moral damage on judicial officials by belying them, and that Russian courts at all levels, from district to Supreme, had passed perfectly correct decisions.

Finally, on October 9 the European Court decided that Russian authorities had prosecuted Arsenyevskiye Vesti unlawfully because the journalists’ actions had not given enough grounds for freedom of expression restrictions or judicial prosecution. The court required the Russian Federation to pay each of the AV founders – I. Grebneva, T. Romanenko and V. Trubitsyn – € 860 in material, and € 1,000 in moral damage compensation.

“We are now certain we are capable of defending ourselves, but we will never be able to have a fair judicial decision passed in this country – not even when we are right. Other journalists and media outlets seeking justice have found themselves victimized. The most vivid examples are the killings of A. Politkovskaya and N. Estemirova (very demonstratively, a law court defended Chechen Presient Kadyrov against journalists’ charges of his being liable for Estemirova’s murder). In such an atmosphere of lawlessness, the European Court of Human Rights seems to be the sole authority that can effectively finish this media-government dispute. It is a pity that our government, in contrast to other European nations, is unwilling to bear responsibility for the unfair administration of justice: we have been more than once told that we, the journalists, are wrong, while those MJD officials are right. Anyway, we are happy we won,” AV editor Irina Grebneva commented on the European Court decision.


2. Moscow Region. Attack on journalist

By Natalia Severskaya,
GDF staff correspondent in Central Federal District

Andrei Khmelevsky, a reporter for the newspaper Kolokolnya, was attacked and ruthlessly beaten up by unidentified men in Pavlovsky Posad, Moscow Region, on his way home from work late on October 2.
 
He was taken to hospital with a concussion, some lacerated wounds and numerous bruises.

“This cynical attack on Andrei Khmelevsky was doubtlessly connected with his professional activities. It is particularly alarming that the journalist was beaten up a few days before the municipal elections,” the newspaper Kolokolnya stated.
 

3. Chelyabinsk Region. Information blockade: loyalty tests for one and all

By Irina Gundareva,
GDF staff correspondent in Ural Federal District

For more than a week now, sixteen pensioners aged 65 to 67 have been on a hunger strike in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region. They are demanding the return of their shares in the local steel works (MMK) which were sold without their consent six years ago.

This old story is known to all, but the former shareholders have not been able to get back their assets ever since. They have complained to authorities at all levels, staged picketing actions and protest rallies, but all in vain. The conflict flared up over 30,000 small holders’ shares that were kept at one time by the managing company MeCom but were purchased at a heavily dumped price in 2003 by unidentified persons – by the MMK top managers, according to Sergey Vassilyev, coordinator of the struggle for the return of the shares. Seeing no other way out, the deceived holders went on a hunger strike eight days ago, choosing a studio in Stalevarov Street as the site of the protest action. The strikers are regularly visited by psychiatrists, police officers and FSB men.

“Servicemen of the Center to Combat Extremism are keeping watch night and day all around the place, video cameras in hand,” Vadim Borodin, press secretary of the Deceived Shareholders’ Committee, said. “The district police inspector comes several times a day, and ambulance vehicles have arrived more than once. The doctors made us give written pledges that they will not be held responsible for our lives if we decline to be taken to hospital in case of emergency.”

One lady striker was forcibly hospitalized because her condition was deemed very serious. But up until now not a single administration official or United Russia executive in Magnitogorsk has shown any reaction to the protest action of the desperate pensioners. Moreover, the top managers of the steel works have established an information blockade regime in the city and throughout the region as regards not only the hunger strike but also any other information that may damage their company’s public image. All media workers know that reporting about explosions, accidents and tragedies at the steel works is a taboo; otherwise, reprisals will follow.

Also, they say separate confidential instructions have been given to all media owners regarding the pensioners’ strike: if you publish a single line about it, you will have big problems tomorrow and the reporter who wrote that will instantly be kicked out into the street. “Yes, I have been warned I should not get near the place where those hunger strikers are,” Ulyana Shevchenko, Komsomolskaya Pravda staff correspondent in Magnitogorsk, said. “They say all journalists are video recorded, and the steel works managers know who came and when, what one said, etc. Oddly enough, my Moscow bosses are in no hurry to give me the go-ahead, although I told them at once I was ready to write a report about this protest.”

With those who will not be intimidated, MMK prefers to conclude agreements and pay for reporting services. The sole newspaper venturing to publish a report about the steel works last August was the independent daily Chelyabinsky Rabochiy. Shortly afterwards, a group of high-ranking MMK managers went to Chelyabinsk to talk to the CR editor in private, and the newspaper’s staff correspondent in Magnitogorsk, Kuralai Anasova, was summoned to the MMK information department for a good dressing-down and told that her newspaper would now have to pass “loyalty tests” (sic!) regularly.

“Ever since it became a private company, MMK has not only established an economic and political dictatorship in the city but also sealed off all information sources,” V. Borodin said. “Suffice it to say that over the eight days of our hunger strike not a single media outlet in Magnitogorsk – and there are five TV channels and many newspapers, magazines and radio stations – has reported a word about it, as if there were no hunger strike at all!”

The strikers are ready to go as far as it takes to get their names re-entered in the list of MMK shareholders – unless they die of hunger, which seems quite possible.


4. Moscow. Reporter admitted to open court hearing by pure chance

By Natalia Severskaya,
GDF staff correspondent in Central Federal District

Dmitry Florin, a reporter for the Caucasian Knot news agency, arrived at the Dorogomilovsky District Court at about 10:30 a.m. on October 8, expecting the court to pass a decision on the case of a group of Caucasian-born students calling themselves “Black Hawks”, who had beaten up two young men whom they thought to be neo-Nazis.

All the adjacent streets and backyards were patrolled by the police, including special task force servicemen. A courtroom officer did not let the reporter through into the area surrounded by a metal fence and police cordons, saying that there were no vacant seats. Asked who had given orders not to let journalists through to attend an open court hearing, the officer said it was his own decision. Striking a conversation with a group of people at the entrance to the court, who turned out to be close to a nationalist organization and personally acquainted with some of the high-ranking police officers present there, Florin learned that no media reporter would be admitted to the courtroom unless he had received an authorization in advance. His conversation with the nationalists was watched by the police officers in the cordons. So when Dmitry approached a police major standing a few yards away, he was taken to the major’s boss, a colonel, who had also seen the reporter talking to the nationalists.

After a brief exchange with the colonel, who said “Well, some of your guys are already inside; but if you wish to, you may as well go join them”, the major escorted Florin through several police posts into the courtroom. Apparently, the policemen mistook him for a reporter for some nationalist newspaper, and the nationalists to whom he had talked must have decided he was somehow linked with the police or military, judging by his khaki jacket that looked much like a piece of military uniform.

It was only due to his clothes and the poor coordination between the guarding units that the journalist managed to get inside the court building to attend an OPEN court hearing…


5. Volgograd. Journalists unlawfully detained in district leader’s office

By Alexander Osipov,
GDF staff correspondent in Southern Federal District

In the Traktorozavodsky District of Volgograd on October 8, police officers detained two journalists distributing information bulletins released by the news agency Vysota 102. As we have already reported, after a series of hacker attacks on its website, the Vysota management decided to start issuing a print bulletin covering mayoral activities.
 
The two journalists, Maxim Grudtsev and Yegor Osipov, were taken to the district police headquarters. Asked why they had been brought there, an officer snapped: “We had orders from our superiors to find and detain you.” Then a police major escorted them to the district administration headquarters for a meeting with the district head, Alexander Zuyev.

The head of administration wanted to confiscate the bulletin copies the journalists had on them and to find out where the rest of the print run was. In the presence of a police officer, Zuyev threatened the detainees with instituting criminal proceedings against them for the spread of “libelous and smearing” information; the officer copied the journalists’ passport data into his notepad. After a lengthy conversation with the district leader and the reporters’ refusal to submit the bulletin copies, two brawny guys were invited into the office for a private talk with the detainees.

“You must know matters of this kind are seldom decided in court. We think fists are more effective,” one of the men told Y. Osipov. And M. Grudtsev was warned that the two guys knew his address and would visit him a couple of weeks later “to see whether you are a friend or a foe”. Then the Vysota reporters were released.


6. Astrakhan. Reporter banned from polling station

By Dmitry Florin,
GDF staff correspondent in Central Federal District

On the voting day, October 11, freelance reporter Vyacheslav Yashchenko arrived at the polling station at High School No. 4 in Astrakhan to prepare a report about the municipal elections. However, he was banned from the place on the pretext that he should have requested accreditation in advance. His references to the Media Law provisions guaranteeing him free admittance to this kind of sites were disregarded.

Instead, he was approached by a group of sturdy guys who told him they would use force unless Yashchenko and his colleague left voluntarily. The journalists walked out but Vyacheslav managed to shoot a few sequences featuring those “sturdy guys”. The latter, noticing his move, ran after the reporters, caught up with them in a bystreet and told them to erase the recording. Hearing “no” in reply, they proceeded to beat the journalists until they deleted the sequences featuring the attackers’ faces. But, according to Yashchenko, as one of the attackers was trying to tear Vyacheslav’s voice recorder off his neck, he accidentally activated the REC button, leaving an audio recording of what was happening during the attack.

The journalists are considering the possibility of reporting the incident to the police.


7. Republic of Karelia. Uneasy conscience betrays itself?

By Anatoly Tsygankov,
GDF staff correspondent in North-Western Federal District

The district newspaper Kondopozhsky Listok (KL) in Kondopoga, Karelia, has carried an article analyzing the process of election of members of local administrations.

The publication did not mention a single candidate’s name, but one of the race participants, a worker of the local paper-and-pulp plant, decided for some reason that the article was about him and filed a legal claim against KL in connection with a passage allegedly damaging his reputation by suggesting that candidates for seats on local councils are generally apt to promise a lot to voters in the run-up to elections while forgetting all about their pledges once they get the deputies’ IDs. The plaintiff demanded a refutation and RUR 13,000 from the defendant in moral damage confiscation.

According to KL editor Sergey Kononov, that was not the only legal claim filed against his media outlet by plant workers running for seats on local councils. With Kondopozhsky Listok being the sole independent newspaper in the district, and the other two – Avangard and Novaya Kondopoga – owned by the paper-and-pulp plant management and the district administration, respectively, it is quite understandable that only KL can afford reporting about the town’s largest industrial plant and its workers running for power without bias.


8. Republic of Dagestan. Cameras of two crews of TV reporters confiscated

A REN-TV crew of reporters covering the pre-election situation in Derbent, Dagestan, was attacked by unidentified persons on October 10. According to Anton Nazarov, the TV network’s press spokesman, “correspondent Dmitry Sanin and cameraman Alexei Karpukhin had just started recording a fistfight outside a polling station when several men in camouflage uniform rushed towards them from amidst the crowd to confiscate the camera and recordings, and run away”. Criminal proceedings were launched in connection with the attack and, as one of the investigators had informed Sanin, the law enforcers were “actively searching” for the TV equipment and documents confiscated from the journalists. Soon afterwards the camera was found in a roadside garbage bag.

On the following day, a similar story happened to a crew of reporters for the television company TV-Makhachkala covering the elections in Derbent: unknown men confiscated the journalists’ camera. According to some sources, the expensive camera jumped to the eyes of “a group of heavily intoxicated guys”. Also, there has been a report about the same thing happening to TVC reporters, but an official representative of the channel refuted that information.

[Based on Ekho Moskvy reports]

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GLASNOST DEFENSE FOUNDATION

Some statistics cited

Last week, the Glasnost Defense Foundation was referred to at least 20 times in the Internet, including at:

http://www.interfax.ru/society/news.asp?id=103886
http://infox.ru/authority/state/2009/10/06/Nurgaliyev_konstatir.phtml
http://www.ruj.ru/2009/091006-1.htm
http://versii.com/news/189384/
http://www.arms-expo.ru/site.xp/049051124049049051051057.html
http://www.ura.ru/content/urfo/06-10-2009/articles/1036254221.html
http://www.tltnews.ru/runews/fullnews.php?id=7181
http://www.charter97.org/ru/news/2009/10/7/22573/#
http://www.lpgzt.ru/aticle/4662.htm
http://lenta.ru/news/2009/10/07/memory/
http://tv2.tomsk.ru/news/2009/10/07/1254920676.html
http://lb.com.ua/news/world/2009/10/07/10445_v_moskve_pochtili_pamyat.html
http://novosti.err.ee/index.php?26180119
http://www.lenizdat.ru/a0/ru/pm1/c-1079795-0.html#1
http://www.lenta.cjes.ru/?m=10&y=2009&lang=rus&nid=14361
http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/160417/
http://www.ifex.org/russia/2009/10/08/advocacy_mission/

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OUR PUBLICATIONS

Further on freedom of expression

By Vassily Moseyev,
President, Perm Region branch of Russian Journalists’ Union

The region of Perm, just as the other Russian regions, has been busy drafting its budget for 2010. The original version of the draft proposed allocating RUR 136,000,000 in provisions for the media coverage of government performance. When the debate was in full swing, parliamentarian A. Agishev published an article titled “Pro-Government PR at Peak of Crisis” in the newspaper Novy Kompanyon, urging his colleagues to scrap the relevant item of expenditure and redirect the money into health care, education and social security …

Actually, the article proposed separating the press from the government altogether, to prevent the emergence of “pocket” media outlets focusing on the activities of regional leaders only. “I am positive that, given equal development opportunities, the best media would thrive without any budgetary support,” Agishev wrote.

The deputy’s proposals got a mixed reception. The point is, the regional administration and Legislative Assembly do not have media outlets of their own, and it is unclear how the people would be informed about administrative and legislative activities: specifically, who and on what terms and conditions would be publishing normative acts, etc.

About 35 to 40 district newspapers, hitherto working with the regional administration on a contractual basis, would be sure to close. In small towns and villages, the advertising market is actually non-existent. Therefore, for many local media orders from the regional authorities are tantamount to staying afloat. Most TV and radio companies, too, are heavily dependent on allocations from the regional budget.

The media and parliamentary communities are vigorously debating whether A. Agishev made just another populist move or if he is earnestly concerned about freedom of expression. Time will show. So far, it seems, freedom of expression has been impossible without external support.

This Digest has been prepared by the Glasnost Defense Foundation (GDF), http://www.gdf.ru.

We appreciate the support of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Digest released once a week, on Mondays, since August 11, 2000.
Distributed by e-mail to 1,600 subscribers in and outside Russia.

Editor-in-chief: Alexei Simonov

Editorial board: Boris Timoshenko – Monitoring Service chief, Pyotr Polonitsky – head of GDF regional network, Svetlana Zemskova – lawyer, Vsevolod Shelkhovskoy – translator, Alexander Efremov – web administrator in charge of Digest distribution.


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