The awards ceremony was held at the House of the European Union in Vienna.

“The factors that determined the jury’s decision were distinct courage in investigative journalism, the democratic significance of the articles, and also Mikhail Beketov’s personal fate,” said Rubina Mering, president of the Austrian branch of the organization.

Thirty-five pieces of journalistic works from a dozen Russian regions were presented to the jury altogether, mostly from the printed media but also from radio and television programs.

The jury was made up of representatives from several international organizations, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and UNESCO.

Mikhail Beketov, Editor-in-Chief of the opposition newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda, was an active opponent of a controversial highway construction project between Moscow and St. Petersburg through the Khimki Forest. In a 2008 interview on REN-TV, he accused Khimki Mayor Vladimir Strelchenko of setting his car on fire. The mayor sued him for slander, and although a court convicted Beketov last month, the sentence has since been overturned. Also in 2008, the journalist was severely beaten by two unknown assailants, leaving him wheelchair bound, unable to speak, and with three amputated fingers.

Olga Bobrova has been a journalist with the outspoken opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta since 2002. Following the Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004, Bobrova began to focus on the North Caucasus in her journalistic work. She has since continued to work in the critical tradition of Novaya Gazeta and its most well-known journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered four years ago.

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.

On April 5, the Tverskoy Court in Moscow sanctioned a search and seizure of the New Times editorial office in connection with police accusations of libel. The police attempted to carry out the seizure this past Wednesday, but Editor-in-Chief Yevgeniya Albats refused to hand over any documents, maintaining that the seizure is illegal while the magazine awaits a hearing to contest the decision in the Moscow City Court.

In response to the failed search, the international journalism watchdog Reports Without Borders and the Russian Union of Journalists have issued press releases condemning the court decision and actions by the police. Both are reproduced below.

Russian Union of Journalists
Announcement
April 16, 2010

The Russian Union of Journalists expresses its extreme anxiety with the attempt to seize documents from the editorial offices of the New Times. The court decision allowing investigators to seize interview notes that contain references to sources of information constitutes a gross violation of source confidentiality as guaranteed by media legislation and the Russian criminal code. We hope that higher courts will rectify this mistake, or the impending plenum of the Russian Supreme Court will explain that the court can free an editorial office from its duty to keep journalistic sources confidential only in connection with an ongoing case; that is to say, after the case has been brought to court, and not simply by the request of investigators or interrogators.

We cannot disregard this dangerous precedent since it risks becoming common practice, thus burying the possibility for a trusting relationship between journalists and their sources. Source confidentiality is a safeguard for the constitutional right of citizens to obtain complete and objective information.

Secretariat of the Russian Union of Journalists

Translated by theOtherRussia.org.

Reports Without Borders
Police try to search Moscow weekly for sources to story about elite unit
April 14, 2010

Reporters Without Borders condemns today’s abortive attempt by the Moscow police to search the premises of the Moscow-based independent weekly The New Times/Novoye Vremya in execution of a court order that is the subject of an appeal by the weekly.

Moscow’s Tverskoi district court issued the search order on 5 April in response to a libel action by the elite Omon police and the General Directorate for Internal Affairs (GUVD) under article 129 of the criminal code over a 1 February story in The New Times headlined “Omon Slaves” about alleged corrupt practices within the elite unit.

Reporters Without Borders stresses its complete support for the magazine and its staff, who have the courage to do proper investigative reporting into matters of general interest, an activity that is at the core of real journalism.

“We share the view of The New Times editor Yevgenia Albats that the protection of journalists’ sources is an essential element of press freedom and that investigative journalism cannot exist without it,” Reporters Without Borders said.

No search can legally be carried out in response to the court order until the weekly’s appeal has been heard, and The New Times deputy editor Ilya Barabanov told Reporters Without Borders that the search order was illegal under articles 41 and 49 of the media law.

Based on information provided by unidentified sources with Omon, The New Times story accused the elite unit of selling its protection services to businessmen and even criminal organisations. It drew an immediate denial from Omon followed by the libel action.

The Moscow City Court is set to hear the New Times’ complaint on April 28, and we will be following the course of events as they continue to develop.

In South Sakhalin, an army lieutenant attacked a reporter of the Yuzhno Sakhalinsk “Tvoya Gazeta” (Your Paper). Pavel Abakumov was trying to make sure than no ballot stuffing was taking place.

In Novosibirsk, photographer Yevgeny Ivanov was accused of “resisting the authorities” and “failing to register,” when he refused to stop taking photos in a polling station.

In St. Petersburg, a reporter of “Grazhdansky Golos” was detained by militsiya for “being in a polling station without authorization.” Her newspaper is run by Golos, an independent electoral monitoring group. Another employee of the same organization was refused access to a polling station in Chelyabinsk. He was also told to keep at least 50 meters away from the entrance. When Governor Pyotr Sumin arrived, the reporter was arrested, and only released when higher authorities stepped in. There was also information that journalists at several polling stations in Moscow and Astrakhan were ordered by security forces to remain more than 50 meters away from the stations.

A reporter of Vpered (Forward), a local daily from Khimki in the Moscow Oblast, was attacked by militsiya officers when he tried to walk out of a polling station with his voting ballot. He had been told by an employee of the electoral commission that it would not be a problem.

Finally, a journalist of the British Daily Telegraph was kept from interviewing voters coming out of a polling station in the Moscow district of Sokol.

However, the government allowing the march does not mean allowing the marchers to attend it or the citizens of Samara to learn about it. The arrests, detentions, confiscations, and harassment continue unabated. Yesterday, the editor of the Samara edition of Novaya Gazeta, Sergei Kurt-Adzhiyev, his daughter Anastasia, and several other journalists were detained. Anyone producing or distributing our materials is vulnerable to harassment. Anastasia Kurt-Adzhiyev was distributing flyers promoting the rally at the time she was detained. She and rally organizer Yuri Chervinchuk were picked up, according to police, because they might have had grenades in their bags. And jet fighters in their pockets, no doubt. We reiterate that every one of our Marches of Dissent have been entirely peaceful on the part of the marchers. All the violence has been on the police side of the lines.

Computers at Novaya Gazeta have been confiscated to prevent the release of the publication, which dared to mention that an opposition rally was to take place in the city. (The official pretext was a search for pirated software!) Many other activists have been detained. The representatives of Lyudmila Alekseeva of the Moscow Helsinki Foundation human rights group were arrested upon their arrival at the Samara train station, having been advised twice that there would be in trouble if they continued their journey. Another was suddenly called up to the army and taken away. One student activist was expelled from university on the grounds — and so stated — for his participation in Other Russia.To show up in Samara under these circumstances takes tremendous courage. Our activists continue to labor under great pressure and we salute them and thank them. Radio Echo in Samara has helped us a great deal and so far the local AVTO Radio has accepted our commercial. [ Update: AVTO, Radio Echo, and a local TV station have now all refused to run our commercials inviting people to attend the march. A march approved by the city government! ]

The organization Reporters Without Borders released a statement on the situation in Samara. An excerpt:

“We are outraged to see that even important international meetings do not prevent the political authorities from harassing leaders of the Other Russia coalition who are organising a protest march (although it has been authorised) and the journalists who have interviewed them,” the press freedom organisation said. “This is a flagrant violation of human rights and civil liberties, and we urge all human rights activists to be especially vigilant in the coming months, which will be decisive for Russia’s future.”

Reporters Without Borders added: “The record of the last seven years confirms our conviction that Vladimir Putin is an enemy of press freedom. It is our duty to appeal for solidarity with Russian human rights activists and journalists so that they do not feel isolated. Their struggle must find support outside the country, starting with the European Union.”

The toll of the past week in the city of Samara alone is very worrying. Three journalists working for the daily Kommersant and REN-TV were arrested on 10 May while interviewing Mikhail Gagan outside his apartment building. Gagan is one of the organisers of the “Dissenters’ March” which Garry Kasparov’s Other Russia and other anti-Kremlin groups plan to hold in Samara on 18 May as the summit is taking place there.

The Putin goverment must believe the visiting leaders and journalists in Samara are fools. Do they really believe officially permitting the march while jailing and intimidating the marchers will convince them that Russia is a respectful democracy? It’s like trying to paint over a big hole in the wall. The Kremlin wants to be able to say, “Look how few protestors showed up. Everyone here is happy!” But in reality they have already exposed their authoritarian ways. They learned on April 14 and 15 that beating the protestors generated bad publicity, too much of which could lead to a rift with the West and the endangerment of all that looted money they have abroad. So now, with the world watching more closely, they are trying methods that are harder to photograph. It is still nothing more and nothing less than the broad usage of police and other security forces for political repression.