Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009europe and central asia: analysisA terrible, terrible thing, but, really, what makes this death so important?After all, tens of thousands have been killed in Chechnya over 15 brutal years ofseparatist conflict. Why should this murder be an international issue?Estemirova, 50, was one of the few expert witnesses to the human toll inChechnya. Writing for Novaya Gazeta and the news Web site Kavkazsky Uzel,and reporting for Human Rights Watch and the Russian rights group Memorial,she had accumulated a damning body of evidence linking torture, disappearances,murders, arsons, and punitive violence to Chechen authorities and, particularly,to the militia of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.One reporter asks: Who isstill willing to chronicleChechnya’s horrors?“A question hangs over her execution,the most recent in a seriesof killings of those still willing tochronicle Chechnya’s horrors,” wroteNew York Times reporter C.J. Chivers,who said Estemirova had helped him on many stories. “Is the accounting ofthe human toll now over? Without her, will Chechnya become, like Uzbekistanand Turkmenistan, a place where no one risks asking hard questions openly?”Estemirova is among 19 journalists murdered in retaliation for their workin Russia since 2000, CPJ research shows. Murder convictions have been wonin only one case and, even there, the masterminds have evaded punishment. InSeptember, a CPJ delegation traveled to Moscow to issue a report, Anatomy ofInjustice, that examined Russia’s failure to solve journalist murders. In Moscow,we met with government officials and top investigators to discuss our findingsand seek their commitment to bringing thorough, independent prosecutions.While our meetings did not produce breaking news, we left with the sensethat at least some officials recognized the need to reverse this record of impunity.Their expressed commitment to collaborate with international partners—as theypledged to do in the case of slain U.S. editor Paul Klebnikov—was an encouragingnote. Officials with the Russian Investigative Committee, the law enforcementarm of the Prosecutor General’s office, agreed to meet with CPJ in 2010 toupdate their progress in these unsolved murders.But great skepticism is warranted. Throughout the decade, Kremlin and regionalauthorities have sought to obstruct, marginalize, and demean their critics.Probing journalists have been effectively banned from influential federal televisionchannels—the main news source for most Russians—and pushed to limited-audienceprint and Internet publications. These journalists are vulnerable to attackgiven their isolation and the official hostility to their work. This culture has causedextensive damage: Coverage of important topics such as corruption, human rightsabuses, and organized crime goes largely unnoticed by the public. Impunity in attackson journalists induces further self-censorship among colleagues.CPJ research has shown that justice has been thwarted by systemic shortcomingsat every level—political, investigative, prosecutorial, and judicial. Investigationsof the murders of journalists have been consistently opaque, oftencompromised by internal conflicts of interest, and frequently subjected to unduepolitical influence. Take the case of Maksim Maksimov, a St. Petersburg reporterwho was investigating corruption in the local Interior Ministry when he disappearedin June 2004. In the hands of the same local authorities Maksimov hadbeen examining, the murder probe went nowhere. Investigators made no evidenteffort to follow up on allegations that local officers themselves were involved inMaksimov’s disappearance.Time and again, CPJ research shows, investigators failed to pursue workrelatedmotives. In the few cases that reached the courts, prosecutors broughtweak or even bogus cases to trial. In the corruption-ridden city of Togliatti, forinstance, investigators ignoredjournalism-relatedmotives in the killings ofValery Ivanov and AlekseiSidorov, consecutiveInvestigations are compromisedby conflicts of interest andpolitical influence.editors of the muckraking newspaper Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye. After coercing aconfession, prosecutors tried an innocent man in the murder of Sidorov. The manwas acquitted, and the case is unsolved.At times, important evidence has been lost or concealed. Novaya Gazeta editorYuri Shchekochikhin died in 2003 from a rare dermatological condition thatstruck as he was investigating a high-level corruption scheme. Officials at thegovernment-run clinic where the journalist had been treated sealed the medicalrecords, calling them a state secret. The records, eventually given to a Moscowprosecutor, then vanished.A historian by education and a Chechen-Russian by descent, Estemirovapossessed the intellectual rigor to methodically document facts and the innatedrive to fight injustice. Living under a regime that represses women, she woreheels and red lipstick and looked men straight in the eye. In a profile publishedthree days after her death, The Times’ Chivers described the importance of herwork: “To the families whose pain she worked to relieve and whose stories sheforced the world to see, she was a resolute champion. To the men whose crimesshe exposed, case by case, with a quiet composure, she was a confounding enemy,a feminine nemesis they could neither fathom nor dissuade.”158159