Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009europe and central asia: russiaRUSSIAAfter a deadly decade for the press, the tone set by the kremlinappeared to have changed. President Dmitry Medvedev said in July that justice injournalist murders is important “to honor the people who died while defendingour legal system, defending regular people, and to educate an entire new generationof citizens.” International attention intensified, too, as the European Parliament,top U.S. officials, and the U.N. Human Rights Committee condemnedongoing and unpunished attacks on journalists.But from the streets of Moscow to the restive regions of Chechnya and Dagestan,the brutal reality did not change. At least three journalists were killed fortheir work in 2009, bringing to 19 the number of work-related slayings in Russiathis decade. There weret o p developments»»International community intensifiespressure to halt impunity.»»Authorities restart investigations intoKlebnikov, Politkovskaya murders.key statistic19Journalists murdered inretaliation for their work since2000. Murder convictionshave been won in one case.a few tentative advances towardjustice in 2009—arrestsin one murder, pledges tore-examine other unsolvedslayings—but those steps didlittle to alter the dangerousconditions confronting thenation’s critical press.A few snapshots to illustrate:Two of the 2009 murdervictims worked for a single paper,the independent NovayaGazeta; five of its reportersand editors were slain this decade.Five journalists in towns across Russia were badly beaten in 2009 after coveringsensitive subjects, including government corruption and official misconduct.In 11 cases during the year, journalists, their media outlets, or their families werethreatened, harassed, forced to leave their assignments, or prosecuted on politicizedcharges. Russia is the fourth-deadliest country in the world for journalists,and the ninth worst in solving those crimes, according to CPJ research.CPJ advocacy continued to focus on impunity. In September, a CPJ delegationtraveled to Moscow to issue an investigative report, Anatomy of Injustice,which examined Russia’s failure to solve journalist murders. CPJ’s Kati Marton,Nina Ognianova, and Jean-Paul Marthoz met with officials from the presidentialhuman rights council, the Foreign Ministry, and the Investigative Committee ofthe Prosecutor General’s Office—the lead agency in charge of solving the killings.Investigators agreed to meet with CPJ again in 2010 to discuss progress in thecases. CPJ traveled to Brussels as well, where it urged European Union officials toactively engage with Russia on impunity in crimes against the press.The year got off to a devastating start when Anastasiya Baburova, a 25-yearoldfreelancer who reported on neo-fascist groups for Novaya Gazeta, and StanislavMarkelov, a prominent human rights lawyer, were shot and killed on a busystreet just a mile from the Kremlin. Early on the afternoon of January 19, thetwo were walking together toward a metro stop after leaving a press conference atwhich Markelov had criticized the early release of a Russian army colonel convictedof murdering a Chechen girl. An assassin wearing a ski mask approached frombehind, shooting Markelov and then Baburova with a pistol fitted with a silencer.In the aftermath, Novaya Gazeta requested permission from the InteriorMinistry for its staffers to carry guns for self-protection. “The state cannot defendus,” Editor-in-Chief Dmitry Muratov told the independent radio stationEkho Moskvy. The Interior Ministry declined the request, but police did maketwo arrests in the case in November. The suspects were identified in the press asmembers of a neo-fascist group. Nikita Tikhonov, 29, was accused of being thegunman, while Yevgeniya Khasis, 24, was said to be the lookout. The InvestigativeCommittee and the Federal Security Service (FSB), which conducted a jointinvestigation, did not say whether the suspects had acted on their own or at thebidding of others. The case was pending in late year.On July 15, another assassination shook the independent Russian press.Grozny-based Natalya Estemirova, who contributed articles on human rightsabuses in Chechnya to Novaya Gazeta and the independent Caucasus news Website Kavkazsky Uzel, and who worked as a researcher for Human Rights Watchand the domestic rights group Memorial, was abducted by four men who forcedher into a sedan and sped off. Her body, with multiple gunshot wounds, wasfound hours later near the village of Gazi-Yurt in neighboring Ingushetia. Witnessessaw the kidnappers but were too afraid to speak, press reports said.Through her reporting and research, Estemirova had accumulated evidencelinking human rights crimes to Chechen authorities, and particularly to armed unitsloyal to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. She was among the few remainingjournalists based in Chechnya to regularly report on human rights issues. The chillingimpact of Estemirova’s murder was immediate. Novaya Gazeta announced itwould suspend reporting trips to Chechnya because it could not guarantee the safetyof its journalists. The Grozny branch of Memorial, which Estemirova headed,suspended activities for nearly six months before resuming work in late December.No arrests were made or progress reported in the investigation.On August 11, a Dagestani journalist known for his critical commentarywas found shot in his car on a street in the capital, Makhachkala. The victim,Abdulmalik Akhmedilov, was deputy editor of the Makhachkala-based daily186187