A young Russian journalist has been found dead in his Moscow apartment, Interfax reports.

Acquaintances of 26-year-old Dmitri Okkert said that they had not had any contact with the journalist over the course of three days. On Friday morning, investigators found Okkert’s slain body in his central Moscow apartment.

An investigation is currently underway at Okkert’s residence. Sources in Russian law enforcement said that more than thirty knife wounds were found on the victim’s body. There was no report on any possible motive for the killing.

Anatoly Bagmet, head of the investigative department of the Moscow Regional Prosecutor’s Investigative Committee, will reportedly be personally in charge of the investigation.

Dmitri Okkert had worked as a journalist and television host for a variety of major Russian media outlets. He became a correspondent for the Vesti news program on the state-run Rossiya television channel in 2005, and proceeded to work as a journalist with the independent REN-TV network and the state-controlled NTV network later on. He had been a news host on the business channel Expert-TV since December 2008.

Russia is notorious as one of the most deadly countries in the world for journalists. This past April, the American think tank Freedom House ranked Russia 175 out of 196 countries for global press freedom, calling the country’s media environment “repressive and dangerous.” The Paris-based press watchdog Reporters Without Borders included Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on its recent list of “predators of press freedom.”

Vsevolod Bogdanov, head of the Russian Union of Journalists, estimates that more than 300 journalists have been murdered in Russia in the past 15 years, with the majority of cases remaining unsolved. Because of the lack of court convictions in cases involving murdered journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Russia in 8th place on its impunity index for the years 2000-2009.

President Kadyrov’s debut as an official predator of press freedom comes as no surprise following last year’s surge in violence against journalists in the North Caucasus. The report cites 5 journalists killed in that region in 2009 alone, and 22 since 2000:

Often referred to as “Putin’s guard dog,” Ramzan Kadyrov shares the Russian prime minister’s taste for crude language and strong action. President and undisputed chief of this Russian republic in the North Caucasus since April 2007, he has restored a semblance of calm after the devastation of two wars. A high price has been paid for this superficial stability, the introduction of a lawless regime. Anyone questioning the policies of this “Hero of Russia” (an award he received from Putin in 2004) is exposed to deadly reprisals. Two fierce critics of the handling of the “Chechen issue,” reporter Anna Politkovskaya and human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, were both gunned down – Politkovskaya in Moscow in October 2006 and Estemirova in Chechnya in July 2009. When human rights activists blamed him for their deaths, Kadyrov was dismissive: “That’s bullshit, that’s just gossip,” he said.

The report blames the Kremlin for buying Kadyrov’s loyalty and for using government-run media outlets to create the veneer of a legitimate press. The analysts were equally scathing of the prime minister himself:

“Control” is the key word for this former KGB officer: control of the state, control of the economic and political forces, control of geopolitical strategic interests and control of the media. The national TV stations now speak with a single voice. …The Nashi (Ours), a young patriotic guard created by the Kremlin in 2005 at the behest of Putin and others who lament Russia’s imperial decline, sues newspapers critical of the Soviet past or the current government when it is not staging actual manhunts. As well as manipulating groups and institutions, Putin has promoted a climate of pumped-up national pride that encourages the persecution of dissidents and freethinkers and fosters a level of impunity that is steadily undermining the rule of law.

Putin and Kadyrov found themselves among fifteen other presidents and prime ministers condemned as predators of press freedom, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. All over the world, says the organization, 9 journalists have been killed since the beginning of 2010, and another 300 are sitting behind bars. In Russia alone, the Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that 19 journalists have been murdered as a direct result of their work since 2000. A murder conviction has only been handed down in one of those cases.

The Freedom House report maintains that press freedom declined in 2009 all over the world, including in Western Europe. That said, “Russia remained among the world’s more repressive and most dangerous media environments,” and figures among countries where the political opposition, non-governmental organizations, and independent media outlets come under the greatest deal of censorship and pressure.

Experts at the organization label Russia as one of a number of governments with “an authoritative bent” that are expanding control over both traditional media and the relatively more free internet. “The space for independent media in Russia has been steadily reduced as legal protections are routinely ignored, the judicial system grows more subservient to the executive branch, reporters face severe repercussions for reporting on sensitive issues, most attacks on journalists go unpunished, and media ownership is brought firmly under the control of the state,” says the report. “Russian authorities are also moving to restrict internet freedom through manipulation of online content and legal actions against bloggers.”

More concretely, Russia was grouped together with Venezuela and China as countries in which “[s]ophisticated techniques are being used to censor and block access to particular types of information, to flood the internet with antidemocratic, nationalistic views, and to provide broad surveillance of citizen activity.”

The report also slammed Russia for one of its most notorious statistics: since 2000, nineteen journalists have been murdered in Russia in retaliation for their work, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Only one of those cases resulted in a murder conviction. Freedom House named Russia as one country where impunity for journalist murders “is encouraging new attacks, significantly hampering media freedom.” In addition to the direct effect on the murdered journalists, the report says that “these attacks have a chilling effect on the profession as a whole, adding to the existing problem of self-censorship.”

Except for in the Baltic states, analysis from the rest of the former Soviet Union was not much more encouraging. Only Ukraine and Georgia were deemed to be “partially free,” while the remaining countries were ranked as “not free.” Among those, the only countries that fared worse than Russia were Belarus (taking 189th place), Uzbekistan (tied for 189th), and Turkmenistan (194th). The report also calls Russia “a model and patron for a number of neighboring countries,” indirectly implying that its bad influence is partially to blame for the low rankings of fellow former Soviet states.

Summing up the state of press freedom in the country, Freedom House says that the media environment in Russia is “marked by the consistent inability of the pliant judiciary to protect journalists; increased self-censorship by journalists seeking to avoid harassment, closure of their media outlets, and even murder; and the frequent targeting of independent outlets by regulators.”

“Reporters suffer from a high level of personal insecurity, and impunity for past murders and other physical attacks is the norm,” the report goes on. “The state’s control or influence over almost all media outlets remains a serious concern, particularly as it affects the political landscape and Russians’ ability to make informed electoral choices.”

Afanasyev said two unknown assailants ran up to him in a schoolyard near his home, hitting him in the head. One of them asked the other “is that him?” and when the second attacker said “yes,” both men pounded him repeatedly until he lost consciousness. The journalists connected the attack with his professional work. According to the Gazeta.ru online newspaper, he did not seek medical attention after the assault.

The editor came to prominence in the days after the deadly disaster at the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant, which killed over 70 workers. On behalf of the victims’ families, Afanasyev publicly questioned the official response to the catastrophe, asking whether there may have been survivors trapped in air pockets within the wreckage of the dam. The journalist also suggested that the official death toll, which was only 10 people at that point, was entirely too low.

Local authorities in the Republic of Khakassia then pressed charges against him for alleged defamation. Sergey Shoygu, who heads the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations and led the rescue effort, said it was essential to find those guilty of sowing panic after the catastrophe.

On September 1st, the case against Afanasyev was closed, although officials declined to name a reason. Speaking the day before, Shoygu had amended his statement, saying that he was “not asking for the blood” of Mikhail Afanasyev, but that he should apologize.

The same day that Afanasyev was attacked, rescuers recovered the 74th body from the ruins of the hydroelectric station. According to authorities, there is now only one woman who worked at the dam and has yet to be found.

The Sayano Chernobyl
Vitaly Portnikov
August 21, 2009
Grani.ru

I remember the first days after the Chernobyl disaster well. I wasn’t living in Kiev then, but wanted to visit my relatives for the May 1st holidays. The accident had already taken place, but it was absolutely impossible to understand what was happening: the official reports were patchy, Western radio voices were strenuously suppressed, and even they at first had trouble getting a sense of what happened.

The May 1st demonstration resolved everything. It was hard to suspect that it could be conducted in a city that should, to be safe, have been evacuated. That was how I ended up in the post-Chernobyl Kiev. And after several days took ill with a heavy cold. Panic was already wandering the city streets, everyone was picking up [Radio] Svoboda and Voice of America, buying up red wine by the case. The doctors who visited me only shrugged their shoulders: what do you want, radiation, people are dying now like flies… They started washing the tram stops with soapy foam, parents tried to send away their children to relatives in other cities, even under threat of expulsion from the Party and dismissal from work.

And so, in its throes, sneering over its subjects and scornful of them, the empire of lies, whose leadership would declare glasnost just a few months after the Chernobyl nightmare, was on the verge of death. And it seemed that all this would end forever. At least they wouldn’t hide catastrophes from the people. At least in the critical moments, the government would think not about a pretty picture on the television, but about human lives.

It turned out that everything was just starting. The accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station, and the willingness of authorities to crush the single(!) journalist who disputed the official version of events, presses this home with complete clarity.

In recent years, many in Russia were sincerely perplexed, [wondering] why the crazy dissenters went to their marches, and independent journalists, instead of describing the color of Kseniya Sobchak’s underwear or the eyebrow movements of yet another high-ranking bureaucrat, tried to make sense of the authorities’ true intentions. As if these people didn’t live in the Soviet epoch and don’t understand what stupefying silence leads to. As if they don’t remember how one could only find out about plane crashes if they happened in the West, how those who tried to relate the execution of workers in Novocherkassk were arrested, how they suppressed the truth about natural disasters, hunger, emergencies.

Ultimately, Chernobyl was the end and not the beginning to the lies. In that same Ukraine in the 30s, newspapers merrily recounted the successes of agriculture to their dying readers in the epoch of the Holodomor. Then, already after the war, an entire section of Kiev went underwater when the authorities tried to backfill Babi Yar, with its hated memory of murdered Jews, and erect a dance floor in its place – and again, to speak about this was anti-Soviet agitation.

They have found just about the same clause for journalist Mikhail Afanasyev. I’m not one to judge the truth or exactness of his information about the possible victims of the accident. I won’t even say that this person is saving the honor of the journalist profession. At least because the workers of the official Russian media and those close to them, who lie to the people daily about what happens in their own country and the world around it, aren’t journalists at all: they are ordinary grey bureaucrats, working for their ration in prescribed conditions.

Were there a different society, then journalists would appear. But in order for this to happen, Russia’s citizens must themselves feel the necessity for honest journalism, which thinks about them, and not the authorities. Not for the sake of abstract freedom and democracy, but for the sake of ordinary safety. So they’ll remember about you, your wife, your son, your mother, when you end up the victim of nature, an accident, terrorism – and not just cast them aside, like soulless debris, for the sake of a pretty television report.

translation by theotherrussia.org

Speaking at a press-conference for the second installment of his latest film, The Inhabited Island, Bondarchuk was asked to speak on symbolism in the movie.  The futuristic sci-fi flick, based on a 1971 novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, takes place on a planet ruled by a military dictatorship, where authorities use a network of towers as mind-control devices over the population.

Bondarchuk, a member of the ruling United Russia party, told the audience that “we are heading into the toilet,” suggesting that the film’s towers represented propaganda and the complete lack of media freedom in Russia.  The words were picked up in the Russian blogosphere, spreading like wildfire after they appeared on the Kasparov.ru online newspaper.

With his speech public, the director went on the defensive, recanting what he had said and expressing disgust at Kasparov.ru.  Speaking with the PolitOnline internet publication, Bondarchuk said, “I feel downright unpleasant – I’ve been smeared…  I was talking about [a quote] from a Serebrennikov film, ‘Russian film is in the toilet, only Fyodor Bondarchuk is a cool guy,’ and they transferred these words to the country.  I said nothing of the sort!  Everyone knows my position and what I say about the president perfectly well.”

Bondarchuk went on to clarify that America, not Russia was descending into totalitarianism:

“I really did speak about newspapers, but that we’re heading, that there’s a totalitarian regime – I was actually talking about America.  They organized such a mess – changing two words and coming out with this… I always said that I support United Russia and can speak freely, make films in a free country.  I said ‘Thank God that I don’t live in Belarus, where they banned the screening of The Inhabited Island.’  But they don’t write this!  One more time – the phrase was said about a motion picture, it was a quote.  They’ve completely lied through their teeth at Kasparov.ru.”

A full transcript of the press-conference (Rus), however, seems to contradict Bondarchuk’s later comments.

A listener asks the director, “What do you associate with these towers in our country?”  After a pause, Bondarchuk responds:

“We’re heading into the toilet… There are no newspapers, no radio.  There’s only the internet.  When we had Yeltsin, people ran to watch the television, which was full of substantial and candid programs.  And now the newspaper headlines have started to resemble propaganda times.  There are no alternatives visible, and this is frightening.  I can speak on this for a long time, but then I’ll have problems…”

It is unclear what problems Bondarchuk was referring to, and what the consequences of the director’s words will be.

The meeting in question took place on August 29th at Putin’s residence in Sochi, where 35 media heads gathered to speak with the prime minister. Remnick reminds readers that Putin regularly held these types of gatherings during his presidency.

According to an account from the Washington Post, Putin spent several minutes berating Venediktov in front of the group, reading excerpts of what he found wrong in Ekho Moskvy transcripts. “I’m not interested in who said these things,” one participant recalled Putin telling Venediktov. “You are responsible for everything that goes on at the radio station. I don’t know who they are, but I know who you are.”

Afterwards, Venediktov approached Putin in the hallway and told him he was being “unjust.” Putin responded by pulling up a handful of transcripts and reportedly saying “You have to answer for this, Aleksei Alekseevich!”

Remnick writes that the editor was concerned, but “calculated that Putin would never have invited him to Sochi with the rest of the delegation had he intended to get rid of him or Echo of Moscow. That could have been accomplished with a telephone call.”

“Afterward, we met one on one, and there Putin’s tone was more positive,” Venediktov told Remnick. “But he made his point. He was demonstrating his ability to do whatever he wants with us at any time.”

Having returned to Moscow, Venediktov told the station’s staff that they should “pay careful attention” to how they report on events, checking their facts and making sure to air enough government views.

The day after the meeting in Sochi, Venediktov announced that Ekho Moskvy would not be inviting Valeriya Novodvorskaya, a dissident politician, to appear on air for the rest of the year. The politician had made remarks which seemed to “sing the praises” of Shamil Basayev, a Chechen warlord who claimed responsibility for the 2004 Beslan school siege. Venediktov also gave orders to remove all transcripts and audio recordings of Novodvorskaya’s appearance on the station. The politician, in turn, assessed the move as “slanderous accusations of a criminal offense (that is, publicly justifying terrorism).”

Ekho Moskvy is primarily host to serious news and talk radio, including social commentary and political discussion. The station is often the first source for interviews with prominent opposition politicians, and is widely seen as the only independent news broadcast with a national reach in Russia. A running joke is that media figures exiled from state-controlled television and newspapers subservient to the government eventually end up as co-hosts. The station broadcasts out of Moscow and reaches around 2.5 million people across Russia through partnerships with local stations. Its broadcast is also heard in other countries of the former Soviet Union.

Still, Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas monopoly, remains as a majority shareholder in the station. While journalists and anchors on the station have worked to maintain integrity and independence, Venediktov himself calls the Kremlin “our main shareholder.”

The whim of the Russian authorities, then, and Putin himself is all that keeps Ekho Moskvy from going permanently silent.

—
Background reading

Aleksei Venediktov, interviewed in the Izvestia newspaper on September 3rd. (excerpt)

All of us understand that the bloody conflict was unleashed by Saakashvili. The shelling and murder of peaceful residents is not a topic for discussion. But the rest can be given consideration. During the conflict, we sought an interview with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili. We did not receive one neither here nor there. So what did we do? We took an 8 minute interview from EuroNews with one representative of authority, took the same from another [from the other side], combined this and sent it out on the air. And after [we ran] an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, our radio station was shut down in Tbilisi. Why? It is unclear. It must be said that this is entirely characteristic of weak rulers who are hiding the truth from their people.

…“Ekho Moskvy” is a platform for discussion, where different points of view must be heard. And I only welcome the word “biased.” Who needs a commentator who doesn’t have their own point of view? We have different ones here –from Yevgenia Albats and Yulia Latynina to Maxim Shevchenko and Aleksandr Prokhanov.

In my opinion, one must speak about risks, about potential ambushes, and not to operate like the American Fox channel, which always supported the Republican administration in the war in Iraq. But in that same America there’s the NBC channel, which gives a different point of view, and which was even called Vladimir Putin’s “fifth column” in the US by a Fox commentator. There is a platform for discussion. If discussion is happening in the country and different arguments are sounding, it allows the right decisions to be made with fewer mistakes. Nevertheless, Valeriya Novodvorskaya has been entered into Ekho’s “stop list” for her statements about Shamil Basayev.

translation by theotherrussia.org

As the Interfax news agency reports, Moscow city prosecutors have filed a motion with the Basmanny regional court after finding that an episode of the show broadcast in January “bore signs of extremist activity.” Simultaneously, the channel that broadcasts the award-winning American cartoon, 2×2, has been issued a warning for disseminating extremist materials.

An investigation conducted by prosecutors found fault with an episode titled “Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Special,” which went on air on January 9th. Experts found that the show “humiliates the honor and dignity of Christians and Muslims, offends the feeling of believers regardless of their denomination, and can provoke interethnic conflict, up to and including extremist acts.”

The report was instigated under a controversial 2006 law, which broadened the definition of extremism. Government critics have said the law allows the state to easily limit freedom of speech. Since its inception, it has been used to target non-profit organizations, online newspapers, bloggers, and even a hobbyist who rebuilds World War II era tanks.

South Park, which debuted in 1997, has continually been at the center of controversy in the US over its coverage of adult themes, including racism, religion, and celebrity culture. In Russia, a dubbed version of the show has ignited angry protest from religious groups. In March, the heads of protestant churches in Russia appealed to Yury Chaika, the country’s prosecutor-general, to repeal 2×2’s broadcast license.

The Prosecutor-General’s Office has now apparently heeded the call to reprimand 2×2, which broadcasts primarily animated content in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Office filed a presentation today to Rossvyazokhrankultura, the nation’s media regulating body, after concluding that 2×2 repeatedly broadcast material that broke a law meant to protect children.

A panel of experts examined the 12 animated series shown on the channel, including 118 films. Among them are the Simpsons, Family Guy (translated into Russian as the Griffins), Metalocalypse, Drawn Together (translated into Russian as Multreality), Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl, Angry Kid, and others.

The experts found that the cartoons do not correspond to the legal requirements for protecting children’s moral and mental development and protecting their health. The cartoons “promote violence and cruelty, pornography, anti-social behavior, abound with scenes of mayhem, the infliction of physical and ethical suffering, and are aimed at invoking fear, panic and terror in children,” the Office said in a statement (Rus).

“Practically all the cartoons exploit the topic of suicide, and characters demonstrate readiness to risk their lives for the sake of deriving extreme sensations.”

A representative of 2×2 could not be immediately reached for comment.

As the Sobkor®ru news agency reports, Kasparov spoke before a gathering of international news industry leaders, and described the “mythology of the Putin regime.” He called the group to stand up to infractions against press freedom in Russia.

After the speech, Yevgeny Abov, the representative of the Russian delegation, renounced Kasparov’s remarks, and said that the press agency he represented at the forum, RIA Novosti, was completely free. Abov said that RIA, which is state-run, frequently publishes information about the Russian opposition.

Kasparov then asked Abov if RIA Novosti was prepared to provide him with space for a press-conference.

Abov answered in the affirmative, promising that space would be made available for Kasparov. At that point, another member of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Sungorkin stepped in. Sungorkin, the editor-in-chief of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper was doubtful: “Kasparov is a special case”, he said “as he works with the banned National-Bolsheviks, which is why I’m not sure that he would be allowed in RIA.”

The discussion’s moderator, the deputy editor-in-chief of the Spanish El Pais newspaper, then responded in his own right: “I grew up in the days of the Franco dictatorship, and we were all ‘special cases.’”

Speaking with Sobkor®ru, Kasparov said he would try to use RIA Novosti facilities to hold a press conference in the near future.

—
Video of the event, courtesy of the World Editors Forum:

—

Participants of the World Newspaper Congress also discussed the danger journalists face in Russia. According to Rodney Pinder, of the International News Safety Institute, Russia has emerged as the world’s second most dangerous country for journalists, trailing only Iraq.

“And we don’t know of a single successful conviction in Russia,” he told The Associated Press. “And convictions are what are needed to protect journalists.”

Garry Kasparov has frequently said that media freedom has been crushed under former President Vladimir Putin, who is now Russia’s prime minister.

The latest evidence to back his statements comes from a New York Times report on self-censorship in another medium–television. As the Times writes, Russian TV channels keep a so-called “stop list” of figures who must not appear on the airwaves.

One economist critical of the Kremlin, Mikhail Delyagin, was apparently given an appearance by mistake on a popular talk show. Before “The People Want to Know” program aired, Delyagin was digitally removed from the tape.

The show’s host, Kira Proshutinskaya, said she was embarrassed over this and other incidents, and admitted that networks are constantly intimidated by the Kremlin.

“I would be lying if I said that it is easy to work these days,” she told the Times. “The leadership of the channels, because of their great fear of losing their jobs — they are very lucrative positions — they overdo everything.”

It was earlier reported that a row of Russia’s most prominent publishers were planning to print a blank front-page on May 21st, with only five lines of text. The protest was meant to signify what would happen if the price for delivering newspapers continued to rise, and if consumers could no longer afford subscriptions. “Freedom of the press can be strangled in different ways,” a group of editors said in a statement. “For instance, by a sharp jump in subscription rates.” Participating publications included the Argumenty i Fakty, Izvestia, and Komsomolskaya Pravda newspapers.

By the late afternoon, the event was dropped.

“White lines won’t be issued tomorrow,” Pavel Gusev, the editor-in-chief of the Moskovsky Komsomolets, told Interfax. “The fact of the matter is that the presidential administration and the Ministry of Telecommunications and Print got involved in the affair, and most likely, all of our demands will be satisfied.” Gusev, who heads a federal advisory committee on matters of freedom of speech in the media, said that special negotiations will take place Thursday.

According to the publishers, the Russian Post has broken promises to keep price hikes tied to inflation.
Vladimir Sungorkin, the editor in chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda, said that “prices have recently grown by 100%, 200%, and even 400% in some regions.” He added that corruption and mismanagement at the postal service was partly responsible.

Vladimir Mamontov, the editor-in-chief of Izvestia, said that “the action [was] directed to sparing the print media, for now.”

“Commercially successful newspapers are taking part in the action, but they are also worrying,” Mamontov continued. “And what of those publications, that don’t have the capacity to use the resources of the advertising market to such an extent?!”