Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s few remaining independent newspapers, is burying this month its fifth murdered journalist in the past eight years. [see AP and Moscow Times stories here below].
I wish I could say these are rare and unusually horrifying events, but I used to read about such news on a weekly, if not daily basis throughout my eight years in Moscow as a foreign correspondent. [Arguably it’s a big country – 9 time zones, but still…].
I remember, at the beginning of my stay, leafing through the brochures and magazines of companies selling security services and products, and comparing the prices of bullet-proof jackets. I had settled on the latter, after dismissing the bodyguard, although I had briefly considered that too, if only to be accompanied during my trip home after work. That’s often when they try to get you. It’s around that time that I had heard of a 28 year-old young woman lawyer at Deloitte who had been gunned down in her own apartment. I was very close to reach out for my kopecks [Russia is still very much a cash society] to protect myself. Needless to say that such personal safety/security services in Russia are to this day a booming business.
Overseas travel to catch you [as with Litvinenko’s murder in London], knives, poison, hammers,… you name it. There are no limits to the Kremlin’s means and methods to silence an unpleasant voice. And of course, the much more expensive but impeccable, clean and professional contract killing – the method of choice by those who can afford it [i.e. the Russian authorities, among others].
Equally depressing, but very interesting to watch, is the way technology such as the Internet is being used by both the authorities and the public for anti-democratic purposes [see text in bold].
At an inspiring IAP class here at MIT in January called “Call for Action! Mobile Technologies for Activism,” the issue of how to protect journalists in danger zones, including those working in authoritarian regimes, was raised.
If anyone has ideas for how to use technology, mobile or not, to minimize the risks of such attacks as the Russian alternative media is regularly subjected to, I’m all ears.
So no, nothing unusual this month at Novaya Gazeta, it’s just another day in Russia’s independent media landscape.
Now, if you can stomach it, here is the face of independent journalism and human rights in Russia, as it is now in February, freshly reported by AP and The Moscow Times:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1010/42/374119.htm
Sunday, February 08, 2009
The Moscow Times » Issue 4076 » News
Fear and Mourning At Novaya Gazeta
02 February 2009
By Mike Eckel / The Associated Press
— Photo – Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP
Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov, back to camera, planning the next issue of the newspaper at a morning editorial meeting last week. —
The dead loom over the morning editorial meeting at leading investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta. The staff is trying to plan the next issue, and editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov is in an understandably foul mood.
In a corner hang photos of four reporters he has lost in the past eight years — one beaten to death, one allegedly poisoned, two shot — the most recent on Jan. 19.
It’s not easy to put a paper out these days, Muratov said.
“There’s usually a lot of jokes, laughing, talk about ideas. But our batteries are totally spent,” said Muratov, 47, billows of pipe smoke filling the long pauses. “How can there be any sort of [normal] frame of mind when a journalist is being buried?”
That journalist was Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old reporter. She and a human rights lawyer were shot execution-style by a masked man with a silenced pistol as they walked together a few blocks from the Kremlin.
In a country considered one of the most dangerous for journalists, no newspaper has suffered like Novaya Gazeta. Most media have been cowed into submission, and no other newspaper publishes such probing investigative articles and acid commentary about government corruption, police-state politics and war abuses in Chechnya.
“Every two or three years, we lose someone,” said Yelena Kostyuchenko, a 21-year-old investigative writer for the paper. “But you just have to write, write, write and keep writing. You have to.”
Some 16 journalists have died in contract-style slayings or under suspicious circumstances in Russia since 2000. Many more have been assaulted or threatened.
Under Vladimir Putin, who became president in 2000 and now is prime minister, the television networks watched by most Russians were taken over by the state, their news operations highly sanitized. Big-selling newspapers are either sympathetic to the Kremlin or owned by Kremlin-allied business groups.
Of the many free-spirited papers that sprang up when the Soviet Union collapsed, Novaya Gazeta — meaning New Newspaper — is a rare survivor.
Its most high-profile loss was Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter who savaged the Kremlin for its conduct of the war on Chechen separatists. Her shooting outside her Moscow apartment in 2006 provoked worldwide condemnation and major embarrassment for the Kremlin.
Three Chechens — two brothers and a former police officer — are on trial for Politkovskaya’s murder, but the prosecution is not offering a motive or identifying any mastermind, leading Novaya Gazeta and others to claim that the trial is a cover-up. Putin has claimed that the killing was hatched abroad to discredit Russia.
The paper’s first fatality, in 2000, was Igor Domnikov, who wrote about regional corruption. He was attacked with a hammer. Seven members of a criminal gang were convicted of his murder in 2007. The lead defendant claimed a regional governor had Domnikov killed for criticizing him. The governor was not charged.
In 2003, Yury Shchekochikhin died of a severe allergic reaction, but colleagues claimed that he was poisoned. Shchekochikhin, 53, wrote about high-level corruption and investigated the deadly 1999 bombings of apartment blocks.
In the latest killing, it appears that lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who specialized in defending Chechens, environmentalists and human rights activists, was the primary target and Baburova may have been killed after she tried to intervene.
Many at Novaya Gazeta are convinced that nationalist or fascist groups are behind the latest attacks, and the paper’s own blog is full of anonymous postings celebrating the killings. Others suspect the involvement of security agencies, citing past incidents when Novaya Gazeta’s phones were tapped; in 2000, its computer hard drives were stolen.
Novaya Gazeta writers and editors have attended self-defense classes and keep their notes hidden or stored on secure computer servers. Some use pseudonyms. At least one has bodyguards because of death threats. Others take precautions they won’t discuss. Alexander Lebedev, a billionaire former lawmaker who is part-owner of the paper, is demanding that authorities allow its reporters to carry guns.
Not all the paper’s staff support the idea. Muratov, the editor, does.
“Either we defend ourselves or we go write about nature and birds … and all positive things. We become a tabloid,” he said. “And then we don’t write about the security services. We don’t write about corruption. … We don’t write about fascism.”
Yulia Latynina, a radio show host and Novaya Gazeta columnist who is relentlessly critical of Putin, blames fascist gangs for the killings and accuses police agencies and security forces of sympathizing or even cooperating with them.
Like Politkovskaya, her name appears regularly on death lists circulating on the Internet. Is she afraid? Latynina demurs, saying, “The Kremlin doesn’t need another Politkovskaya.”
Vera Chelysheva, who writes for the paper’s web site, said most Russians are indifferent to the murders.
“This is a country that lived through the gulag camps, through Stalin, they know how to kill people. That’s why no one is taking to the streets in protest,” she said. “This is a country that’s forgetting its history.”
Founded in 1993, Novaya Gazeta is published thrice-weekly and its circulation has climbed to 270,000 — less than the state-run or pro-Kremlin newspapers but strong among Russians who seek an independent voice on touchy issues such as government corruption or Chechnya.
A libel judgment nearly shut it down in 2002. Then, three years ago, Lebedev and former President Mikhail Gorbachev bought a 49 percent stake for an undisclosed sum. The journalists hold the remaining shares.
Two days after the latest killings, half the front page was filled with a photo of Markelov lying on the sidewalk, blood pooled by his head, and these words of defiance:
“The killers have no fear. Because they know that they will never be punished. But the victims also have no fear. Because when you defend another person, you stop being frightened.”
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1010/42/373695.htm
Sunday, February 08, 2009
The Moscow Times » Issue 4067 » News
Lawyer Fighting Budanov’s Release Shot Dead
20 January 2009
By Natalya Krainova, Alexandra Odynova / The Moscow Times
— Photo – Igor Tabakov / MT
Investigators standing over the body of Stanislav Markelov, lawyer for the family of slain Chechen woman Elza Kungayeva, in central Moscow on Monday. —
A lawyer for the family of a Chechen woman murdered by former army Colonel Yury Budanov was shot dead Monday in central Moscow after holding a news conference decrying Budanov’s early release from prison last week.
Stanislav Markelov, who was representing the family of Elza Kungayeva, was shot dead by a masked assailant at about 2:30 p.m. Monday on Ulitsa Prechistenka, near Kropotkinskaya metro station, a city police spokesman told The Moscow Times.
A freelance writer for the liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Anastasia Baburova, was struck in the head by a bullet and died from the injury Monday evening in the hospital.
Markelov, 34, was slain just a few blocks away from the Independent Press Center, where, immediately prior to the attack, he had held a press conference condemning an Ulyanovsk court’s decision to release Budanov on parole.
Budanov, convicted in July 2005 for the murder of Kungayeva, walked free from an Ulyanovsk prison Thursday morning, sparking outrage among the victim’s family and senior Chechen officials.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for strangling Kungayeva, 18, in Chechnya in 2000, but the court last month ordered his early release, citing good behavior in prison and more than five years of time served in pretrial detention.
Budanov, who has maintained that he believed Kungayeva was a rebel sniper and said he strangled her in a fit of rage during an interrogation, has become a rallying figure for Russian nationalists who claim that his conviction was merely an attempt to appease the Chechen leadership.
Markelov made unsuccessful attempts to have the court’s decision overturned, and Kungayeva’s father, Visa Kungayev, said Monday that the lawyer had received threats last week.
“I have no doubts that he was killed for his professional activities, that he was killed because of the Budanov case,” Kungayev told RIA-Novosti.
Kungayev said he received text messages from Markelov last week in which the lawyer said he was being threatened.
Viktoria Tsyplenkova, a spokeswoman for the Moscow branch of the Investigative Committee, said investigators were looking at all possible motives in the contract-style murder, including possible links to his professional activities.
Alexei Dulimov, a lawyer for Budanov, said he was certain that his client had “nothing to do” with Markelov’s murder.
“[Budanov] didn’t have the slightest thought about taking revenge on Markelov,” Dulimov told Interfax. “[Budanov] doesn’t know him and has never seen him.”
Markelov left the press center shortly after 2 p.m. Monday after giving several follow-up interviews to reporters, said a woman who answered the telephone there. She declined to give her name.
A witness told NTV television that a man wearing a green ski mask approached Markelov from behind and shot him in the head at point-blank range. The gunman fled into Kropotkinskaya metro station and presumably left the area by train, NTV reported.
For more than two hours after the attack, Markelov’s corpse lay at the foot of the stairs of building No. 1 on Ulitsa Prechistenka, his head resting in a pool of blood as investigators examined the crime scene.
Prosecutor General Yury Chaika has taken personal control over the investigation, a spokesman for his office said Tuesday evening.
Human rights activists expressed grief and outrage over Markelov’s death. “Markelov was not only a lawyer but an ombudsman,” Oleg Orlov of the human rights watchdog Memorial said in a telephone interview.
“The [slaying] of people like Markelov is a shame to our country,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of Moscow Helsinki Group, Interfax reported.
Memorial activists and other human rights groups said they would lay flowers at the crime scene Tuesday.
Budanov was arrested in 2000, but a court concluded in 2002 that he could not be held criminally responsible because of brain injuries he had sustained in combat during federal forces’ second military campaign in Chechnya.
That ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2003.
Budanov’s appeal for early release was his fifth, with all of his earlier requests being rejected. The Ulyanovsk court’s decision to release him prompted large-scale protests last month in Grozny.