Preparing Independent Russian Media for the 21'' Century:

Final Report on Cooperative Agreement 11 8-A-00-97-00274-00, December 2000
Among the many human rights experts who spoke at NPI during the Cooperative
Agreement period were:
Sergei Kovalev, Duma Deputy, former Human Rights Representative, and Soviet-
era dissident;
Valery Borshchev, Duma Deputy and chairman of the Standing Commission on
Human Rights of the President's Political Consultative Council;
Derek Evans, Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International;
Ludmila Alekseeva, president of the International Helsinki Federation;
Sergei Grigoryants, chairman of the Glasnost Foundation;
Aleksandr Nikitin, ecological researcher;
Boris Pustyntsev, director of Civil Control;
Yury Samodurov, executive director of the Sakharov Foundation;
Holly Cartner, executive director for Europe and Central Asia of Human Rights
Watch;
Aleksei Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation; and
Oleg Orlov, chairman of the Memorial Society.
Because of Russia's continuing domination of and leading role in the CIS
generally, NPI/Moscow devoted considerable attention to the oft& deplorable human-
rights records of other CIS countries, especially Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan. NPI received regular requests to hold briefings from
nationals of these and other countries who simply are not able to speak freely in their own
countries on these crucial subjects.
An illustrative case of NPI's role in the discussion of human rights was the
International Week of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Cuba in 1999. While the
International Press-Club held a briefing with Oleg Mironov - Presidential Representative
on Human Rights - in which Mironov maintained that human rights are fully observed in
Cuba, NPI held a briefing with Cuban dissidents Javier de Cespedes and Ernesto Diaz
and Russian Duma Deputy Yuly Rybakov in which they reported just the opposite. The
non-state Russian television channel NTV juxtaposed the two press conferences in its
nightly news program, following a brief quote from Mironov with a four-minute excerpt
from the NPI press conference. There can be no doubt that in this case, if not for NPI, the
Russian public would have been presented only with the official story that there are no
human rights violations in Cuba.
Another crucial highlight of NPIYs human rights briefings over the past few years
has been its very active role in keeping the case of Aleksandr Nikitin - charged by the
FSB with spying on behalf of the Norwegian Bellona Foundation - in the news. During
the nearly five years of his persecution (during which he was justly named an Amnesty
International Prisoner of Conscience), NPI held at least 30 briefings on this subject both
in Moscow and in Nikitin's home town of St. Petersburg. Upon his release, Nikitin gave
his first press conference at NPI/St. Petersburg and credited NPI with facilitating the
international attention that led to his release. In January, Nikitin won the 1999 Science
and Human Rights Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
page 26
Center for War, Peace, and the News Media -New York University Chapter 3: NPI Press Centers