(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an 11 April 2001 RSF report: 2001 REPORT ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IN RUSSIA The take-over by the Russian state of the NTV television network follows months of continuing deterioration of press freedom throughout Russia. Coverage of the March 26 presidential election featured a clear bias in favour of […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an 11 April 2001 RSF report:
2001 REPORT ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IN RUSSIA
The take-over by the Russian state of the NTV television network follows months of continuing deterioration of press freedom throughout Russia.
Coverage of the March 26 presidential election featured a clear bias in favour of interim president Putin by the semi-state television network, ORT, and the state network, RTR. He was allotted half the campaign air-time, with the 11 other candidates sharing the rest. Putin’s main opponent in the election, Genady Zyuganov, complained of lack of television access and denounced “arbitrary practices” in the state media.
Pressure also increased in relation to the war in Chechnya as the government and the army tried to prevent public opinion from turning against Russian action in the breakaway republic. In January, the Kremlin appointed a “media coordinator” for Chechnya and a press centre putting out daily official news and organising trips to the war zone under the close supervision of Russian soldiers. On 15 March, the information ministry banned the media from reporting the words of the main Chechen leaders, including President Aslan Maskhadov. Two contraventions of this rule resulted in the cancellation of the media organisation’s permit and a ban on its distribution in Russia. Foreign media also found it harder to work and permits to enter Chechnya became impossible to get.
On several occasions, the government declared its intention to get a better grip on the “strategic sector” of the media. Announced and theorised about in the “doctrine on the security of information” and endorsed by President Putin on 13 September 2000, this policy of “reinforcing state media” in charge of “the broadcasting of reliable information to the Russian people” has been implemented in a systematic way over the past few months. The confrontation staged by the Russian authorities against the “oligarchs” of the news sector, accused of having personally profited by their links with power, is being resolved with a pure and simple state take-over of the only private channel with a national audience, NTV, and probably of the television channel with the biggest viewing audience, ORT. In August 2000, the owner of the partially-state-owned channel, ORT, Boris Berezovski, denounced the fact that the state seemed determined to take over control of ORT. He announced his decision to entrust management of the shares of the channel he controlled (49 per cent) to a group of personalities in favour of maintaining the channel’s independence. According to recent information, these shares were sold in early 2001 to the oil corporation Sibneft, a public-run company, meaning that the television station came under the state’s de facto control. The former station of the Soviet Union’s television network was partially privatised in 1993 and proved to be especially critical of President Putin over the Kursk submarine affair. The channel might now join state-owned channel RTR under state control.
Journalists killed
Four journalists were killed during 2000 for expressing their opinions or while working.
A photographer for the Russian news agency Itar-Tass, Vladimir Yatsina, was killed in Chechnya on 20 February, where he had been held since 19 July 1999 by independence fighters. Several witnesses, including Kazakh businessman Alisher Orazaliyev, who was held with Yatsina for the first four months, said he was executed by the Chechens because his wounds prevented him from moving very fast, thus holding back military advances.
Journalist Alexander Yefremov and two Russian officers were killed on 12 May when their vehicle was blown up by a remote-controlled mine near the village of Kirov, in southeastern Chechnya. Yefremov worked for the daily paper Nache Vremia, of Tyumen (Siberia).
Igor Domnekov, a journalist with the privately-owned twice-weekly paper Novaya Gazeta, died on 16 July of injuries received when an unknown person attacked him outside his apartment building in Moscow just before midnight on 12 May and beat him with a hammer. He was immediately hospitalised with head injuries and never regained consciousness. According to his editor, Dmitry Muratov, the attacker probably mistook him for one of his colleagues and neighbours, Oleg Sultanov, who was investigating corruption inside the metallurgical industry. A month before the attack, Sultanov had received a letter warning that he would be “hit on the head with a heavy object.” Novaya Gazeta has published many articles on corruption, implicating powerful government figures and the FSB (ex-KGB) security services. The newspaper has also criticised Russia’s military intervention in Chechnya since it began in 1994.
Adam Tepsurgayev, a freelance cameraman who worked for several media, notably Reuters news agency, was shot dead in a house in Alkhan-Kala, 10 km south of Grozny, on 21 November. His brother Ali, who was wounded in the attack, said armed men speaking Chechen burst into the house and began firing. The Kremlin’s Chechen war spokesman, Sergei Yastrizhembsky, said the killing “proved once more the need to protect journalists working in Chechnya,” adding that Tepsurgayev had not been accredited by the Russian authorities.
Three other journalists were killed during 2000, but it was not possible to say if their deaths were connected to their work.
Sergei Novikov, head of the privately-owned radio station Vesna, in the Smolensk region, was shot dead on 26 July on his way home. Police said the killing may have been connected to his activities as a member of the management committee of a local glass factory. The interior ministry suggested it might have been a contract murder.
Iskandar Khatloni, a journalist with Radio Liberty in Moscow, was found dead on 21 September with his head smashed in. A link between his death and his job as a journalist investigating human rights violations in Chechnya could not be clearly established.
Sergei Ivanov, head of a privately-owned TV station in the Samara region, was shot dead on 3 October. Police suspected a settling of scores.
Journalists jailed
Andrei Babitsky, a journalist with Radio Svoboda (the Russian section of Radio Free Europe), was arrested by Russian troops on the outskirts of Grozny on 16 January 2000 and held in a filtration camp at Chernokozovo, in northern Chechnya, where he was ill-treated. On 3 February, he was “exchanged” with several Russian soldiers and handed over to Chechen fighters, who were most likely pro-Russian. He was then handed over to a smuggler, who released him in Daghestan (Russian Caucasus). Babitsky said his captors, who had wanted to send him to Azerbaijan, forced him to accept a false Azeri passport. He was arrested again by Russian troops on 25 February and charged with possession of a false passport. Three days later, he began a hunger strike in protest against his detention. He was finally released on 29 February, but put under house arrest in Moscow. He was not allowed to leave Moscow on 7 March for Strasbourg, where he had been invited by the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly, or on July 6 to go to Bucharest to receive the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)’s Journalism and Democracy Prize for his coverage of the war in Chechnya. In October, he was fined 8,350 rubles (308 euros) by a court on the false passport charge. He refused to accept an amnesty granted for minor offences and lodged an appeal for his innocence to be recognised. The Daghestan supreme court confirmed his conviction on 13 December. Babitsky had written articles critical of Russian forces in Chechnya, highlighting the ill-treatment of prisoners in filtration camps. “He’s clearly working for the enemy,” President Putin said in an interview in the Moscow weekly Kommersant in March. “What he’s doing is much more dangerous than firing automatic weapons.”
Tassia Isayeva, a freelance Chechen journalist, was arrested on 1 June during a police check in the village of Zaramaga, in North Ossetia. Her camera and laptop computer were seized and she was accused of working for a Chechen news agency. She was freed on 7 June.
Irina Grebneva, editor of the opposition newspaper Arsenievskie Vesti, was arrested in Vladivostok on 27 July for publishing extracts of phone conversations with local officials that suggested there were irregularities during municipal elections in June. She was accused of “using vulgar language in public places” and jailed in a Valdivostok prison known for its harsh conditions. Her colleagues said her arrest was the authorities’ revenge for her paper’s editorial line. She began a hunger strike as soon as she went to jail and was freed on 1 August.
Journalists arrested
Yevgeny Rukin, bureau chief of the Perm (central Russia) office of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was arrested in early February 2000 and accused of “abusing authority.” He said he was arrested because he had written articles criticising the authorities. He was released soon afterwards.
Giles Whittell, a reporter for the British daily The Times, was arrested in Grozny on 2 February and interrogated at the Khankala army base by Russian secret service officials. He did not have the required accreditation issued by the Russian forces to work in the region. He was released and taken to Moscow the next day.
In May, Russian security officials arrested Vakha Dadulagov, editor of the Chechen newspaper Ichkeria, considered tobe the rebel government’s official organ. He was accused of “incitement to racial hatred” and the paper’s printing press was destroyed.
A Japanese journalist, Masaaki Hayachi, and a Russian colleague, Kheda Saratova, were arrested on 5 August by Russian troops who checked the vehicle that was taking them from Nazran, in Ingushia, to Grozny. Hayachi was ordered to return to Moscow for lack of accreditation. Saratova was allowed to go free.
Ruslan Musayev, a Chechen cameraman for the Associated Press, was arrested during a check on 5 September for not being a registered resident of Grozny. He was taken to the Khankala army base, where he was brutally beaten by Russian soldiers and kept all night at the bottom of a well near the base with four other Chechens. The next day, he was taken to the Ingushia border and released.
Journalists attacked
Dmitry Bykov, a reporter for the weekly Sobesednik, was brutally attacked on 26 January 2000 near his office by two unknown people. A few days later, he received telephoned death threats. He and his colleagues attributed the attack to political articles he had written.
Roman Perevezentsev, a journalist with the Russian semi-state TV station ORT, was forced by armed, masked men on 3 March to hand over a video cassette filmed in Mozdok (North Ossetia) of the arrival of the bodies of Russian policemen killed in an ambush in Grozny the previous day. The cameraman with him was beaten and the cassette was destroyed.
Andrei Bars, of the newspaper Uralsky Rabochy, was attacked while on assignment in July in the town of Kashkanar. He was interviewing the inhabitants, who had been victims of a local gangster, when he was attacked by two men who had followed him all day. The paper had earlier that month printed an open letter from the townspeople complaining that the gangster was still at large.
Oleg Safonov, deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, who had written critically about local authorities, was attacked at his home on 23 August by two unidentified people who beat him over the head with a heavy object.
Sergei Amelin, an investigative journalist who had written several very critical articles about the ruler of Khakassia (a republic north of Mongolia) and had been threatened several times, was attacked with a knife and seriously injured on 30 September.
Alexei Sharovsky, editor of the independent radio station Rostov Echo, was knifed on 2 October by two unidentified people in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia. The station is part of the privately-owned press group Media-Most. The reason for the attack was not known.
Magomet Tekeyev, editor of the daily paper Gorskiye Vedomosti, was attacked on 14 October and bludgeoned with a bag full of nuts and bolts in front of his house in Cherkesk, capital of the republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia. His colleagues believed the attack was directly linked to articles he had written about corruption among the republic’s leaders.
Oleg Luriye, a journalist from Novaya Gazeta, was attacked by unidentified people in front of his house in Moscow on 16 December. He said they had systematically kicked him and that since the previous day, he had been watched because he had expressed his support on the NTV station for the Media-Most group, accusing the authorities of exerting pressure on the group. Luriye had also published articles about corruption.
Journalists threatened
Mikhail Eliseyev, correspondent of the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, received death threats in January 2000 after he wrote articles about corruption in the Penza suburb of south-eastern Moscow. He had been badly beaten up on 30 December 1999 by local militiamen who accused him of saying their organisation was part of the corruption.
Journalist Alexander Khinshtein, who had investigated government and police corruption for Moskovski Komsomolets, was threatened in January with internment in a psychiatric hospital for forging a driving licence. The interior ministry dropped the charges on 17 February as well as the threat of internment.
The military section of the Russian supreme court decided on 21 November to send Capt. Grigory Pasko, a correspondent of the navy newspaper Boevaya Vakhta and stringer for the Japanese daily Asahi and NHK TV station, for a new trial by the Vladivostok military tribunal. He had been jailed on 20 November 1997 for having “gathered state secrets to pass on to foreign organisations.” While he was Boevaya Vakhta’s correspondent aboard the Russian tanker TNT 27, he filmed liquid radioactive waste being tipped into the Sea of Japan. The pictures were broadcast in Japan by NHK without his permission and provoked a sharp reaction in that country. On 20 July 1999 (see 1999 and 2000 Reports), he was sentenced by the Vladivostok military tribunal to three years in prison for “abusing his position.” After serving two-thirds of his sentence, he was freed under an amnesty. Now accused of high treason and spying, he risks between 12 and 20 years in prison.
Pressure and obstruction
A crew from the privately-owned NTV station was punished by the Russian government press office on 23 January 2000 when it was barred from a helicopter press trip in Chechnya. The station had the previous day broadcast a report from its correspondent on the eastern front of the war, Yuri Lipatov, who said 50 Russian soldiers had been killed in a battle to retake the town of Argun.
The Russian state security service FSB (ex-KGB) seized the equipment of Anne Nivat, special correspondent in Chechnya for the French daily newspapers Ouest-France and Libération, on 10 February. The owner of the house where she was staying in Novye Atagi, south of Grozny, was arrested. The FSB confiscated notes, a camera, an address book and communications equipment from Nivat, who was accredited by the Russian foreign ministry but did not have a permit from the North Caucasus military command to work in Chechnya. She was questioned by a court official and then by the FSB and was given a receipt so she could get her material back by 1 May. She was released but kept under guard until she left for Moscow the next day.
The US station Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty accused the Russian information ministry on 15 March of trying to intimidate its Russian offshoot, Radio Svoboda, by asking for the scripts of all its broadcasts since 15 February.
In the middle of the election campaign, on 15 March, a computer hacker gained access to the hard drive of the central computer of the weekly Novaya Gazeta and destroyed the entire issue being prepared. The staff said it contained revelations about funding of the presidential election.
The puppet representing President Putin on the satirical broadcast Kukly on the privately-owned NTV was withdrawn on 28 May at the Kremlin’s request. The station’s director-general, Yevgeny Kiselyov, said it had been assured that it would be “left in peace” if the puppet was withdrawn.
Vladimir Gusinsky, owner of the opposition press group Media-Most, was arrested in Moscow on 13 June while he was appearing in court as part of a probe into phone-tapping. He was accused of “theft and abuse of authority.” Gusinsky had called on people to vote for the reform candidate and Putin opponent Grigory Yavlinsky in the March presidential election. The NTV TV station and the Moscow Echo radio station, which belong to the group, had several times attacked corruption in the country and took a new approach to the war in Chechnya by broadcasting accounts from victims of the conflict. The daily paper Sevodnia, also owned by Media-Most, published a series on the political ascent of some figures in the FSB state security services. Gusinsky was charged on 16 June with “fraudulent privatisation” and “swindling,” put in jail, then freed on condition he did not leave the country. On 28 June, Igor Malashenko, one of his chief aides, was detained and released a few hours later. On 11 July, the offices of NTV and the headquarters of Media-Most were again searched by the FSB. On 27 July, the public prosecutor’s office told Gusinsky the investigation into his affairs was being dropped without charges. Gusinsky’s house arrest and seizure of his property were lifted and he left the country. He was said to have been released after he signed a secret agreement in July with the state gas company Gazprom, Media-Most’s main creditor, to drop a legal challenge to the takeover of Media-Most by Gazprom. Gusinsky renounced the agreement in September and made the text of the agreement signed by communications minister Mikhail Lesin public. Gusinsky was arrested on 12 December in Spain on an international warrant issued by the Russian deputy state prosecutor for “large-scale fraud.” He was freed a few days later pending a court decision on his extradition.
Video cassettes were seized on 22 August from the ORT TV station after it broadcast criticism of the rescue operations surrounding the sinking of the Kursk submarine.
Gen. Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, announced on 31 August that he was taking “personal responsibility” for withdrawing the permits of two ORT journalists, Vadim Chelikov and Vladimir Agafonov, to work in Chechnya.
On 9 September, the ORT dropped its programme Vremia, presented by star reporter Sergei Dorenko, who said the move was linked to his strong criticism of the authorities during the Kursk submarine disaster.
On 11 September, the Vologodskaya military district was ordered by the defence and interior ministries to monitor all news about Chechnya published by the local press.
Preliminary hearings began in Moscow on 27 October in the suit brought by state prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov against the director-general of NTV, Yevgeny Kiselyov, who also runs the news-weekly Itogi. Kiselyov broadcast reports in July and September about Ustinov’s rent-free luxury apartment supplied by the government. Ustinov asked the court to defend his “honour and dignity” and to oblige the journalist and NTV to withdraw their allegations.
During the week of 10-17 November, the FSB state security service interrogated the staff of the privately-owned weekly Versiya about photos published in October showing the collision of the Kursk submarine with a US submarine. The photos were seized on 17 November. The FSB had already confiscated the computer of the journalist in charge of investigative features, Dmitri Filimonov, who was interrogated for four hours to get him to say where he got the photo.
Staff from the Vladivostok paper Narodnoye Veche were stopped from entering their offices on 5 December by city officials accompanied by private security agents. The editor, Maria Solovyenko, and three journalists managed to get in by breaking a window. Solovyenko was beaten and computer equipment was damaged. She said the city authorities wanted to punish the paper for a recent article accusing them of stealing public funds.
A crew from the TV station RTR was attacked on 30 December by unidentified people as it left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after filming a story about 600 tourists on their way to Thailand and Bali who had been held up at the airport for two days. One of the crew’s car tyres was found punctured and as they left, two cars stopped them. The occupants threatened them with weapons, the cameraman was beaten and a camera, film and mobile phones were seized.
New developments in murders and kidnappings of journalists before 2000
Dmitri Balburov, a journalist on the weekly Moskovskie Novosti, was freed on 13 January 2000 after being held hostage in Chechnya for more than three months, since his kidnapping on 4 October 1999 while reporting in Nazran (Ingushia), from where he was taken to Chechnya and badly treated.
A Moscow court acquitted a number of people on 21 January who had been charged with a November 1995 attack in the city’s Kotliakovskoye Cemetery in which two journalists were killed.
Brice Fleutiaux, a French freelance photographer, was released on 12 June after being held in Chechnya for more than eight months. He said he had been freed following negotiations and not through any military operation. No ransom was paid, he said, but he was reportedly exchanged for a Chechen soldier held by the other side. Fleutiaux said he had been treated adequately after a difficult first month. He had crossed into Chechnya from Georgia and been kidnapped on 1 October 1999 by an armed gang in the Chechen capital, Grozny. He was held for a month at Chatoy before being taken to the mountains in the south as Russian troops advanced. He was then handed over to another Chechen group. He remained in the mountains until his release, changing his hiding place regularly. The Kremlin’s Chechen war spokesman, Sergei Yastrizhembsky, said Fleutiaux would be “a warning to other journalists who want to enter Chechnya in the same way.” The Russian government made political capital out of his release. The day he was freed, President Putin (who was leaving on a European tour the next day) received him at the Kremlin for a televised 30-minute conversation and gave him a cassette made by the Russian secret service called The Slave Market in Chechnya.
On 9 November, the trial of those charged with the 1994 killing of journalist Dmitri Kholodov, from the mass-circulation Moskovski Komsomolets, opened in Moscow. Kholodov had been investigating corruption in the army. He was blown up by a bomb hidden in an attaché case of supposedly secret documents he had just collected at a railway station. His murder came just before the presentation to parliament of a detailed report on his investigation into an arms racket that had been run in East Germany by senior Russian army officers. The secret trial was immediately adjourned until 14 November to allow a military court to consider requests from the six accused, who included four officers. The former intelligence chief of the airborne infantry, Col. Pavel Popovskikh, parachute commander Vladimir Morosov, two of his deputies, Alexander Soroka and Konstantin Mirzayants, the deputy head of a bodyguard company, Alexander Kapuntsov, and a businessman, Konstantin Barkovsky, were accused of the murder. After the killing, the paper’s editor, Pavel Gusev, immediately pointed a finger at the counter-espionage services and Defence Minister Gen. Pavel Grachev (see 1995 and subsequent reports).
