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1998
WORLD PRESS FREEDOM REVIEW ON RUSSIA
[The annual World
Press Freedom Review looks at the state of the media in
168 countries, documenting press freedom violations and
major media developments around the globe.
The obstacles
facing the media in Russia are manifold:
assassination is still tragically used to good effect to
silence unwanted voices; cases of intimidation and
harassment are commonplace; the ‘oligarchs’
blithely manipulate the media for personal gain; and a
Communist-led Duma introduces legislation to censor and
control.
Murder has shown
itself to be the preferred method of censorship in at
least five cases in Russia this year.
On June 8,
Larissa Yudina, editor-in-chief of the daily Sovietskaya
Kalmykia, was kidnapped and murdered in Elista, the
capital of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia. On the
evening of June 7, an unknown person claiming to be a
representative of the Agency for Co-development,
reporting to the President of Kalmykia, had made an
appointment with the journalist. He was to give her
documents on the misappropriation of funds, which
implicated the President of the Republic, Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov. The next morning her body was found
with several stab wounds in a dam in the town.
Yudina was also regional vice-president of the opposition
party Yabloko. Her newspaper was in constant
conflict with President Ilyumzhinov, who is also an
influential businessman. Sovietskaya Kalmykia has
published numerous articles criticising his
authoritarianism and denouncing the corruption and
misappropriation of funds under his presidency. For
the past eighteen months, Yudina had also been inquiring
into a company connected to President Ilyumzhinov, called
Aris, which granted tax exemptions to firms setting up in
an off-shore area of the republic. In her newspaper
she claimed that the practice was accompanied by bribes
paid by firms to the Kalmykian President.
Sovietskaya Kalmykia, the only opposition newspaper in
Kalmykia, has often been threatened with closure by
authorities. Since 1993, Yudina had also received
numerous threats due to her articles on the wealth and
personality of President Ilyumzhinov.
Two suspects
arrested in connection with the Yudina murder confessed
to the crime in June. Sergei Vaskin, a former aide
to Kalmykian President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, and Tyurbi
Boskomdzhiev, Ilyumzhinov’s representative in
Volgograd Oblast, were charged with premeditated
murder. Authorities are still searching for a third
suspect in the case. Investigators believe
Yudina’s murder was linked to her journalistic
activities in Sovetskaya Kalmykia Segodnya which is the
only local newspaper that criticises Ilyumzhinov.
President Yeltsin remarked that “not
everything” relating to the investigation can be
shared with law enforcement officials in Kalmykia.
On 21 August,
Anatoly Levin-Utkin, deputy editor-in-chief of
Yuridichesky Peterburg Segodnya, was reportedly assaulted
by two unknown assailants on the porch of his house in
St. Petersburg. He was found unconscious,
suffering from serious head injuries. The
journalist’s briefcase, containing material for the
next paper’s issue, as well as photo equipment and
exposed film, were missing.
On August 24,
following neurosurgery, Levin-Utkin died from his
injuries without having regained consciousness.
According to neurosurgeon Sergei Yevdokimov, the nature
of the journalist’s injuries give reason to assert
that he was murdered.
Yuridichesky
Peterburg Segodnya, which had only commenced publishing
three weeks prior to the murder, had published two
articles on corruption in St. Petersburg’s
banking circles. According to GDF, the banking
management—the focus of articles to have been
published in the next issue—demanded that the
newspaper name its sources for the articles.
Previously, the vehicle carrying the previous issue of
the newspaper had been detained by militia, allegedly
under false pretext.
CPJ reported that
on March 31, 56-year old Ivan Fedyunin, a reporter with
the local Bryanskie Izvestia newspaper, was
murdered. Fedyunin was stabbed to death in his
apartment. Fedyunin’s colleagues at the
Bryanskie Izvestia said that he had recently published
articles concerning the alleged criminal activities of
local companies involved in renovating apartments.
As a reporter for the “politics” department of
the paper, Fedyunin covered the activities of the Duma,
the local legislative body, as well as on current
regional and national political events.
On May 2, Major
Igor Lykov was shot twice at point-blank range in his
apartment in Saratov (southeast of Moscow). Lykov
had repeatedly published articles in the local and Moscow
press concerning corruption and unlawful actions in the
law-enforcement bodies, GDF reported. He was
repeatedly punished for publishing the articles,
including having nine criminal suits brought against him
and twice being dismissed from the militia service.
After a number of articles by Lykov on the methods of
recruiting militia agents were published in the local
press, there was an attempt to accuse him of divulging
State secrets.
On January 30,
Vladimir Zbaratski, a staff member of ITAR-TASS news
agency was murdered on Mosrilmovskay Street, Moscow, as
he was returning home from his office late at night.
Several other
journalists met with violent deaths in Russia in 1998 and
the crimes are currently under investigation to determine
whether the killings were related to the
journalists’ professional activity.
Laws and decrees
relating to the media have played a significant role in
the political debates this year.
Chief editors of
over 30 publications signed an appeal in October urging
the State Duma not to adopt proposed amendments to the
Mass Media Law.
The draft law
expands the list of grounds for closing media outlets and
increases the number of officials who have the right to
do so. If the law is adopted, the appeal says,
supervisory councils will appear in the editorial offices
and these will be, in essence, censoring councils.
Moreover, under the pretext of combating monopolies, the
authors of the draft law propose restricting the
broadcasting of television channels and radio stations to
one constituent part of the federation which, the media
chiefs say, will lead to the closure of nation-wide
television and radio companies.
Overall, the
adoption of such a law will mean an increase in the
control exercised by state bodies over the state media
and possibly arbitrary control by bureaucrats over the
private media, and can only have irreparable consequences
for freedom of speech in the country, the appeal says.
Communist Party
officials launched a public campaign against television
media, pledging to establish a “public
committee” to draw up accusations. The move
came on November 7, the anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik
revolution, RFE/RL reported. Earlier that week
State Duma Deputy and Communist Party faction member
Aleksandr Kuvaev accused several prominent television
journalists of “maiming and raping public
consciousness” and “collaborating with the
regime and its crimes against society,” the Moscow
Times reported. Hearings were held in the Duma on
“problems of morality, social harmony and censorship
on Russian television channels.” The Duma,
which has a Communist Party majority, referred
euphemistically to censorship devices as “ensuring
psychocultural safety measures.”
Communist Party
leader Gennady Zyuganov recently told reporters that
while the Communist Party does not require that state
television be “nationalised”, it must improve
its compliance with the nation’s media law.
Zyuganov added that his party will continue to push for
the establishment of supervisory boards in the mass
media. He also told a press conference that his
party will demand that the leadership of All-Russia State
Television and Radio Broadcasting Company be replaced.
Meanwhile, the
Duma overrode a Federation Council veto of a law on
privileges for the media, thereby extending breaks on
value-added tax and profit tax for media holdings for
another three years. It failed, however, to
override a bill on customs tariffs that would have
extended a similar exemption for the same period.
As a result the price of newspapers and magazines printed
outside Russia might rise two to three times.
A controversial
decree, “On Forming a Production-Technological
Complex of State-Owned Electronic Mass Media.”
was signed on July 27.
The heads of a
number of Russian private TV companies protested at the
advantages given to the state-controlled Russia TV by the
reorganisation of the state broadcasting company,
VGTRK. Among other things, VGTRK will enjoy tax
breaks and exemptions, and it will run—and charge
for the use of—the regional transmission centres
used by its rivals, giving it a virtual monopoly on
signal distribution and the possibility of realising
large profits from the charges it makes for the use of
its facilities. The other television companies
claim that the new law gives VGRTK an unfair advantage
and is inconsistent with Articles 8 and 27 of the
constitution.
ITAR-TASS news
agency reported that a total of 99 state TV and radio
broadcasting companies, as well as other organisations,
were being transformed into federal state unitary
enterprises which would be VGTRK affiliates.
Mikhail Shvydkoy—VGTRK’s recently-appointed
head who is directly answerable to Yeltsin—dismisses
fears of undue state interference and said:
“I’d quit rather than pull the plug on private
broadcasters.”
As the
presidential election set for June 2000 looms closer,
many see this initiative as a Kremlin attempt to jostle
for a strong media position to enable it to effectively
compete with rivals who already have a strong media
presence—for example Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov with
his TV Centre consortium or Aleksandr Lebed, now governor
of Krasnoyarsk region, who has been lent media support by
Boris Berezovsky in the past.
When finally
signed, the decree did not contain the particularly
contentious suggestions of giving the VGTRK $860m in
budget money in 1999 from foreign loan proceeds.
Nor did it include the state enterprise Space
Communications on the list of subsidiaries. Earlier
in the year the RIA Novosti news agency, which has
valuable properties all over the world, was attached to
the VGTRK, changing its name to RIA Vesti.
Reports indicate
that regional leaders, keen to hold on to media assets,
transferred items of value from the books of the
broadcasting stations while the decree was being
debated. As a result, the VGTRK holding is
considerably less valuable than it might have been.
President Yeltsin
made an outspoken attack on Russian media tycoons in May,
accusing them of censoring news for their own
purposes. In a speech delivered to the
International Press Institute World Congress in Moscow,
Yeltsin said that objective, accurate reporting was being
jeopardised by corporate ownership which openly
interfered in editorial policy. He called it
unreasonable and said he would be meeting the heads of
the three main channels later in the week to express his
indignation on this issue and, in particular, in
connection with the “tone” of their coverage of
the miners’ strike.
The President
likes to point his finger at the media at any
opportunity. When he met with Vietnamese President
Tran Duc Luong, the Vietnamese leader said Yeltsin looked
“younger than in photographs,” to which a
smiling Yeltsin replied that the fault lay with the
photographers, not his health.
The health of the
President continues to make news around the world.
He abandoned a Central Asia trip after appearing very
weak this year and afterwards snapped at enquiring
reporters, saying, “You do not even let me
sneeze!”
While
Yeltsin’s treatment of the media is far from
deferential, most pundits view him as a president
who’s willing to tolerate a free press and accepts
this freedom is necessary in order for society to
develop. The mounting fear is that his successor
may not share these sentiments.
Russia’s
press was up in arms in September after Yevgeni Primakov,
the recently appointed Prime Minister, banned members of
his government from talking to the media until further
notice. In a move that smacks of Soviet-era
censorship, Primakov insisted that all press inquiries be
channelled through the information department.
Russia’s leading Kommersant Daily called
Primakov’s moratorium an “iron curtain”
and said it would be naive to believe the
Government’s claim that the move is a temporary
one. The newspaper points out that this kind of
censorship is constitutionally illegal but that no legal
action can be taken against Primakov because his decree
was verbal rather than written.
The economic
crisis that hit Russia this year has all but crippled the
media. Newspaper production costs rose 70 percent
in one month and the advertising market has virtually
collapsed. Since the rouble plummeted, income from
subscriptions is practically worthless. Thousands
of media workers have lost their jobs or are working
without pay. Media owners see the upcoming
presidential elections as the possible glimmer of light
at the end of the tunnel. For once the audience
won’t need money, just a valid voting card, to be
attractive to advertisers.
Russia’s ORT
television station, 51 percent owned by the state and
with the largest coverage of the former Soviet Union, is
threatened with seizure because of unpaid debts of
several million dollars. Bailiffs carried out an
inventory in the luxurious offices of ORT’s
director-general and head of programmes in
November. The bailiffs seized some equipment and
Director General Igor Shabdurasulov announced that he had
been ordered to hand over keys to the station’s
vehicles. ORT officials, predicting possible
bankruptcy, see a political tinge to the legal moves
being made against them, citing the company’s
anti-Communist stance.
“ORT’s
debts are of course very serious but everyone has debts
these days. This is not a financial question, it is
part of the pre-election campaign and the war to win
television and media time,” Sergei Mikhailov, a
political analyst at the Russian Socio-Political Centre
told Reuters.
Around the same
time bailiffs were confiscating ORT’s equipment,
firemen were demanding that the influential Ekho Moskvy
radio station be shut down for failing to comply with
safety standards.
In November the
state-owned RTR television pulled the plug on the
Californian soap opera Santa Barbara. Bearing
placards, a small group of middle aged women mounted a
picket outside RTR in Moscow. RTR said the station
was forced to take the programme off the air because of
falling advertising revenues in the wake of the August
financial crisis. An estimated 10.5 million people
watched the programme every evening, making it by far the
most popular soap on Russian television.
Duma chairman
Gennadii Seleznev announced he will sue a St.
Petersburg newspaper for accusing him of Russian Duma
deputy Galina Starovoitova’s murder in
November. He told reporters that television is
presenting Starovoitova’s murder in “such a way
as to promote the election campaigns of certain
candidates to the St. Petersburg assembly”.
Marina
Kalashnikova, a journalist for Kommersant-Daily, was
reportedly sacked for criticising Russia’s
relationship with former Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir
Meciar.
Kalashnikova
wrote that Meciar has referred to Kremlin spokesman
Sergei Yastrzhembskii as “Slovakia’s ambassador
in Russia”. Yastrzhembskii apparently called
Raf Shakirov, editor-in-chief of Kommersant-Daily, and
said that support for Meciar was in Russia’s
interests, and so demanded that all articles be written
accordingly. Kalashnikova said she was reprimanded
by her editor-in-chief but continued to write critical
articles on Meciar’s style of government.
Kalashnikova was
refused entry into her office on March 23 and her work
pass was confiscated. While she has not been
officially dismissed, she is unable to work, her salary
has been frozen and the paper’s management refuse to
meet with her.
Igor Rudnikov,
editor-in-chief of the newspaper Noviye Kolyesa and
deputy of City Council of Kaliningrad was assaulted on
July 1 by an unknown person, who struck the
journalist’s head repeatedly with an iron tube
wrapped in a sheet of polyethylene, injuring him
seriously. Rudnikov’s colleagues consider that
the assault might be connected with his investigative
reporting. GDF reported that the offices of Noviye
Kolyesa have come under attack twice this year. On
February 6, an explosion was set off outside the
newspaper’s office and on March 1, two Molotov
cocktails were thrown into the editor-in-chief’s
office window.
The Glasnost
Defence Foundation have documented numerous other
instances of attacks against independent media leaders
since the beginning of 1998, including the following:
On 2 January, an
unknown person badly wounded Yakov London, vice-president
of NTN-4 TV channel (Novosibirsk); on 21 January, unknown
persons set fire to the car of Boris Fradkov, Director
General of the Samara branch of Europe Plus radio
station, and later he was threatened with murder in a
phone call; on February 5, an armed attack was committed
on the apartment of A.Baranov, editor-in-chief of the
magazine Stolichny Optovik (Moscow); on 18 February, two
unknown persons burst into the apartment of Anatoly
Kovyrshin, editor-in-chief of the newspaper
Express-Reporter and beat him; on 21 March, unknown
persons beat Eduard Markevich, editor-in-chief of the
newspaper Noviy Reft (Sverdlovsk region); on 11 April,
Alexei Nevinitsin, editor-in-chief of the newspaper
Zolotoye Koltso was beaten in Yaroslavl; on 22 April,
Lyudmila Stakhovskaya, editor-in-chief of the newspaper
Zarya Timana (Komi Republic) was beaten by unknown
persons; on 30 April, Grigory Zabolotsky, editor-in-chief
of the newspaper Volgodonskaya Nedelya Plus was
threatened with physical violence; and on May 15, Igopr
Myasnikov, director of the newspaper Volzhsky Bulvar
(Ivanovo region) was mortally wounded.
A journalist with
the independent newspaper Otechestvo, Sergei Fufaev, was
attacked by unknown individuals on August 14, in the city
of Ufa in the Republic of Bashkortostan. Fufaev,
who had received several threatening phonecalls in
connection with his reporting, said one of the assailants
told him: “You know what this is for.”
The persecution
of journalists by authorities and unknown individuals in
the Republic of Bashkortostan has become more frequent,
according to GDF reports. In January, the
Neftekamsk City court, in examining the decision of the
Ministry of Press and Information of Bashkortostan to
revoke the licence of the privately-owned newspaper
Vecherny Neftekamsk, ruled in favour of the
ministry. In June, on the eve of presidential
elections, broadcasts by Russian television in the
republic were often tampered with by local TV
companies. In addition, issues of Russian
newspapers that criticised Murtaza Rakhimov, President of
Bashkortostan, were unavailable for sale. Further
harassment of the media included efforts to obstruct the
work of the correspondent of the Russian TV programme
“Vesti”.
On July 2, in the
city of Beloretsk, staff of the local economic crimes
prevention unit confiscated 5,000 copies of the
opposition newspaper Otechestvo from distributors.
On August 7, in Ufa, Victor Shmakov, editor-in-chief of
the independent newspaper Vmeste, was assaulted.
Timur Kukuyev and
Yuri Safronov, members of a film crew for the local M-5
television station and stringers for the Russian public
television company ORT in Makhachkala, Dagestan, were
beaten by a group of men dressed in paramilitary uniforms
as they tried to film at the Daghestani-Chechen border on
March 13. Their attackers, CPJ reported, destroyed
the crew’s video camera and confiscated their
videotapes. The crew members were not seriously
injured, but they were shocked that the Daghestani border
guards who witnessed the incident failed to
intervene. On March 16, Kukuyev, the cameraman, was
severely beaten in central Makhachkala by unidentified
men who warned him against “filming anything else on
a foreign territory in the future” as they assaulted
him. He was admitted to a hospital with broken
ribs, a concussion, and a badly disfigured face.
On May 11,
Stanislav Kholopov, editor-in-chief of the weekly
Stolitza-C, was stabbed twice with a knife near his home
in Saransk (240 km south of Gorki) on April 16, RSF
reported. He was immediately taken to
hospital. A militia officer said that the attack
could be linked to Kholopov’s journalistic
work. Local sources have indicated that the attack
could have been prompted by articles written by Kholopov
concerning the militia’s use of torture, articles
which have led to criminal cases being brought against
regional high-ranking civil servants.
Sergei Bachinin,
the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Vyatskii Nablyudatel
in Kirov, was badly beaten by unknown assailants on July
1. He suffered severe concussion and other skull
injuries.
Bachinin, who has
been the victim of a variety of attacks in the past,
believes the crime is linked to the editorial policy of
Vyatskii Nablyudatel, which is critical of local
authorities. Bachinin ran for mayor of Kirov in
1996 and was the main rival of the candidate who won that
election
On May 27, Police
raided the offices of Radio Titan, the only independent
radio station in the Republic of Bashkortostan, beating
and rounding up staff members and supporters, CPJ
reported. Employees and listeners had been keeping
a round-the-clock vigil around the station’s
building, in anticipation of official reprisals after
Radio Titan aired interviews with three opposition
candidates who were barred from the June 14 presidential
elections. Police seized the radio’s equipment
and detained the whole staff, including manager and news
director Altaf Galeyev and Lilia Ismagilova, its
executive director. Although Ismagilova and the
others were released the next day, Galeyev was held for
firing several shots in the air with a handgun when
police stormed the radio’s offices. On 4 June,
Galeyev was charged with “hooliganism” and
“illegal use of firearms” under article 213(3)
of the Bashkir penal code. If found guilty, he
faces a possible prison sentence of four to seven years.
Attacks on Radio
Titan by the strong-arm regime of Bashkir President
Murtaza Rakhimov, who exercises full control over the
media, have been common since 1994, when Radio Titan
began re-broadcasting Radio Liberty and Voice of America
programmes. On May 25, Radio Titan quoted from
several articles in Moscow newspapers revealing the
allegedly corrupt practices of President Rakhimov’s
regime, his total control over the local oil industry and
his tight grip on the media. Staff members maintain
that, as a result of the broadcast, local authorities
made several attempts to silence the station by shutting
off the electricity, water supply and phone lines.
After Galeyev called on listeners to defend his station,
the government-controlled Russian Radio Ufa aired
interviews with Rakhimov’s press secretary and a
psychiatrist, who questioned the “psychological
health” of Radio Titan’s reporters.
Grigori Pasko has
been imprisoned since 20 November 1997 in
Vladivostok. The charges against Pasko—a naval
captain and correspondent for the newspaper of the
Russian Pacific Fleet, Boyevaya Vakhta, who also operated
on a freelance basis for some Japanese media
outlets—are based on his publications in the Russian
and Japanese media over a three-year period. These
publications described the problem of nuclear waste
caused by the deterioration of the condition of the
Russian nuclear submarine fleet in the Far East, as well
as other radioactive nuclear waste disposal problems that
have created a major environmental danger. The
authorities admit that none of the facts he published
revealed state secrets or endangered national
security. Moreover, all Pasko’s contacts with
the Japanese media were sanctioned or co-ordinated with
the leadership of the Pacific Fleet, and all material
published in the Fleet’s newspaper were passed by
the military censor. Nevertheless, the authorities
argue that the net effect of his publications resulted in
revealing a pattern whose exposure constitutes a
challenge to Russian state security. Pasko’s
appeal was rejected in November.
Aleksandr Nikitin
– writer, environmental activist and retired naval
officer – is currently facing high treason charges
for drafting a report for the Norwegian environmental
organisation Bellona Foundation on the dangers of nuclear
contamination caused by Russia’s Northern
Fleet. His trial is on-going.
On July 24 all TV
channels in Chechnya including private ones were shut
down.
On the following
day, the leadership of the Chechen Republic decided to
let Russian RTR and ORT companies resume partial
broadcasting in the republic, however, according to press
secretary of the Chechen President Mayarbek Vachagayev,
only non-political programme are to be allowed broadcast.
The decision to
cease broadcasting by Russian mass media over the
republic’s territory was taken as the Chechen
leadership found their interpretation of what is
happening in the republic to be “preconceived,
distorted and harmful.”
According to
Vachagayev, Russian mass media can fully resume
broadcasting in Chechnya only after their leadership
promise to truly cover events in the republic and offer
their official apologies to the Chechen people.
Vachagayev blamed Russian mass media correspondents
accredited in Chechnya for betrayal of national interests
and venality, and threatened to deny foreign
correspondents accreditation if they do not stop carrying
out orders by their agencies.
Seven journalists
from the rebel republic of Chechnya who were seized on
Christmas Day 1997 in the southern Russian region of
Dagestan were released on January 2. The Chechen
residents, working for Reuters, Worldwide Television News
(WTN), Associated Press and two major Russian television
networks, ORT and NTV, were reported missing after
crossing into Dagestan to report on the aftermath of an
attack on a Russian tank unit there. A group
calling itself the People’s Militia of Dagestan had
said it was holding them and wanted ethnic Dagestanis
being held hostage in neighbouring Chechnya to be freed
in exchange for their release. However, ITAR-TASS
news agency quoted the Dagestani Interior Ministry as
saying their release had been unconditional.
The Moscow
Arbitration Court on February 11 upheld a lawsuit brought
by the private network NTV against the State
Anti-Monopoly Committee, ITAR-TASS reported. In
December 1997, the committee instructed the
Communications Ministry to charge NTV commercial rates
for using state-owned transmission facilities.
Those rates would have more than doubled transmissions
costs for the company, which since January 1996 had been
charged government rates for transmission services.
The
Prosecutor-General’s Office officially charged
retired Colonel Pavel Popovskikh with planning and taking
part in the murder of journalist Dmitrii Kholodov,
Interfax reported on February 12. On February 26,
Major Vladimir Morozov, a paratrooper, was also charged
with plotting Kholodov’s assassination.
Kholodov was killed by a booby-trapped briefcase in
October 1994. Popovskikh formerly headed the
intelligence department of the Airborne Troops.
Sources in the Airborne Troops say investigators searched
Popovskikh’s office last year. They reportedly
uncovered documents listing the names of journalists who
were particularly critical of former Defence Minister
Pavel Grachev and suggested actions to be taken against
those journalists. Grachev was defence minister
when Kholodov, who reported on military corruption, was
murdered.
Valerii Kucher,
the editor-in-chief of Rossiiskie Vesti, informed readers
in a commentary in April that the newspaper is no longer
the official publication of the presidential
administration. Kucher promised that Rosskiiskie
Vesti has been “de-ideologised” and will in
future represent the interests of ordinary citizens and
the middle class. He also said that owing to the
loss of financing from the presidential administration,
the newspaper has been forced to switch from daily to
weekly publication for the time being. Kucher
accused the Kremlin of failing to meet its financial
obligations toward Rossiiskie Vesti and of trying to
force the newspaper to publish only official materials.
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