(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has called on senior Russian officials to immediately release journalist German Galkin. On 15 August 2003, Galkin was sentenced to one year of hard labour for libel. His appeal is scheduled to be heard on 26 September. The organisation stressed the serious precedent it would create to sentence a journalist to prison […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has called on senior Russian officials to immediately release journalist German Galkin. On 15 August 2003, Galkin was sentenced to one year of hard labour for libel. His appeal is scheduled to be heard on 26 September.
The organisation stressed the serious precedent it would create to sentence a journalist to prison as punishment for what he had written. In letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Federation Council Chairman Sergei Mironov and Duma Chairman Gennady Seleznev, RSF also called for a law amendment to abolish prison sentences for libel.
Galkin, who is deputy editor-in-chief of the daily “Vecherny Cheliabinsk”, editor of the weekly “Rabochaya Gazeta” and head of the opposition Liberal Russia Party’s local branch, was arrested as he was travelling to Yekaterinburg.
He was sentenced at a secret trial by the Kalininsky District Court (under articles 129-2 and 130 of the Russian criminal code) for libelling Konstantin Bochkarev and Andrei Kosilov, two deputy governors in the Urals area of Cheliabinsk. Kosilov filed his lawsuit in June 2002, shortly after the publication of three articles in “Rabochaya Gazeta” that accused Governor Piotr Sumin and his aides of embezzlement. The three articles were entitled “The Real Sumin” (16 April), “Government Patience” (8 February) and “Sumin’s Health” (12 February).
Galkin has often criticised local officials and Governor Sumin and was physically attacked outside his Cheliabinsk home on 14 June 2002.
Article 130 (paragraphs 2 and 3) of the criminal code says libel can be punished by up to one year of hard labour. Article 129 provides for a jail term of up to three years for the offense.
On 29 August, Freimut Duve, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) representative on freedom of the media, and Council of Europe Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer called on the Russian authorities to bring the law into line with European press freedom standards.
