Mikhail Fedotov, secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists, was picked by the president on Tuesday to head the Presidential Civil Society Institution and Human Rights Council, as well as to be the president’s human rights advisor.

Fedotov has spoken out on numerous occasions in defense of freedom of the press and many other rights issues, but alo worked as federal press minister prior to his job in the Union of Journalists – a possible cause of concern for some rights activists. At the same time, Fedotov was also a member of opposition leader Garry Kasparov’s Free Choice 2008 committee, which issued a critical declaration of then-President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of crippling democratic freedoms and turning Russia into an autocratic state.

While most Russian human rights activists were positively surprised by Fedotov’s appointments, some took a more critical approach.

“Fedotov isn’t just a rights activist, he’s also a former bureaucrat of the first order, with all the attributes,” Kirill Kabanov of the National Anti-corruption Committee told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “I don’t understand whether his appointment is a promotion for the council or something else.”

Organizers of the Strategy 31 campaign in defense of free assembly immediately appealed to the new rights advisor to help solve the ongoing conflict between opposition activists and the Moscow city government over Triumfalnaya Square. Rallies held on the square have been routinely denied government sanction and brutally cracked down on by city law enforcement. On August 16, 2010, the authorities announced that the square would be closed until 2012 pending the construction of a massive underground parking garage, and issued a blanket ban on public events. Some opposition leaders have been attempting to get Triumfalnaya Square status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, thus preventing the construction, which they see as a ploy to prevent opposition protests.

In response, Fedotov promised to resolve the issue.

“I’ll try to do everything to ensure that this conflict disappears from the realm of public attention,” he told Interfax on Wednesday.

Fedotov said that conflicts do not exist to be stirred up, but to be settled. “How it’s going to be done, I’m not yet ready to say. I’m ready to use all possible means to get rid of this conflict. We need there to be less conflicts, not more,” he asserted.

However the issue is resolved, UNESCO is unlikely to play a role.

“As a former ambassador to UNESCO in Russia, I can say that the process of getting one site or another onto the UNESCO World Heritage List takes no less than five years,” Fedotov told Gazeta.ru. “Before getting onto that list, a site is first [put] onto a waiting list, and other procedures are carried out. We’re going to resolve the issue of Triumfalnaya Square much sooner.”

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.

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.

Update 4/6/10: The Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, turned down the State Duma’s bill during it’s Tuesday session. Mihkail Kapura, deputy chairman of the judicial committee, cited a lack of viability to implement such restrictions and the danger of bringing about the destruction of free speech.

A new law passed on Monday by the Russian State Duma will ban the media from reproducing any statements whatsoever issued by anyone deemed to be a terrorist, ITAR-TASS reports.

The bill was written by Robert Shlegel, a member of the leading United Russia party and former press secretary for the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi. It will amend current legislation governing the media to include a ban on “the distribution of any material from persons wanted for or convicted of participating in terrorist activities.”

Shlegel said that the March 29 suicide bombings on the Moscow metro, which killed 40 people and injured more than 100, was the impetus for the bill. He said that he opposes giving a spotlight in the media to Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel leader who has claimed responsibility for the attacks. He also criticized Google for allowing its YouTube video service to host a recording of Umarov’s post-March 29 statement.

“News about militants should consist only of reports about their destruction,” Shlegel concluded.

Amidst the heightened criticism at the Russian government’s failure to address terrorism originating in the country’s volatile North Caucasus region, some Kremlin supporters have accused the press of being terrorist collaborators. In particular, State Duma Speaker and United Russia member Boris Gryzlov singled out columnist Aleksandr Minkin of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper as collaborating with the terrorists responsible for the March 29 attacks. Minkin has demanded an apology from Gryzlov and threatened to sue him for slander. Gryzlov has threatened a counter suit. Additionally, United Russia member Andrei Isayev has threatened that party members might sue Minkin for being a terrorist collaborator.

Director Oleg Panfilov of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations said that the new law will turn Russia into a country like North Korea and was another example of Shlegel’s “routine stupidity.” “It immediately raises the question,” he said, “Who do we label as terrorists? Those convicted by the court, or those that the bureaucrats consider to be terrorists?”

Secretary Mikhail Fedotov of the Russian Union of Journalists explained that nothing good could result from Russian society being deprived of information about the positions and confessions of alleged terrorists. “Society should know the face of its villains and understand what kind of evil it is being confronted with,” he stressed.

Even without the new law, the Russian media already faces complications with the authorities’ interpretation of current media legislation. Reports surfaced late Monday that the federal communications supervisory agency Roskomnadzor has accused the online edition of the Argumenty Nedeli newspaper of extremism for posting a video of Umarov’s statement. According to the agency, posting the video violates a law prohibiting the media from being used for extremist activity. The law, however, is criticized by oppositionists and human rights groups as being so vague as to allow the government to define extremism however they’d like, and has resulted in crackdowns on a wide variety of groups and individuals critical of the Kremlin.

Nikolai Lykov, editor-in-chief of the Vzglyad news portal, said Rogozhin was rushed to the hospital with severe bruising and cut wounds.  His health remained on edge after doctors operated well into the night.

“The operation, which lasted several hours, was over at around two in the morning,” Lykov said.  “The surgeons, doctors from the 1st city hospital, did everything possible, but they could not give any guarantees.  Vadim still has not regained consciousness, and remains in intensive care.  At this point everything depends on him, on his strength.”

Local law enforcement have launched a criminal investigation under article 111 of the Russian Criminal Code (Intentional Infliction of a Grave Injury).

Rogozhin’s colleagues believe the attackers intended to take the journalist’s life, and said the attack could be connected with his professional activities.  Rogozhin heads the Vzglyad media holding, comprised of an online newspaper, an internet TV station and the Saratovsky Vzglyad newspaper.

The Russian Union of Journalists and local media heads in Saratov released a statement on the incident, pledging support for Rogozhin.  To raise public awareness on the dangers faced by reporters, several Saratov newspapers will publish white spots on the first lines of their front cover pages, the statement said.  The stunt aims to bring attention to the pressure journalists face from the criminal world.

The statement goes on to say that journalists remain the most defenseless “fighters for a just world order.”  “The government must have the will and the means to protect the journalist’s work from criminal lawlessness,” it adds.

Lidiya Zlatogorskaya, the chair of the Saratov branch of the Russian Union of Journalists, said the attack could be connected with Rogozhin’s writing.  The journalist “stepped on the interests of many,” in his articles, she told the Kasparov.ru online newspaper (Rus).  The incident was also likely an attempt to intimidate other media workers, she said.

According to Zlatogorskaya, attacks on journalists in Saratov are fairly common.

“God grant that he recovers.  We are very concerned.”

Correspondents are now relegated to the press-center on the fifth floor, and the adjoining bathrooms. Federal officers will escort journalists to and from the press-center, in order to make sure that the journalists don’t wander off in the corridors of power, and don’t have the chance to make unsanctioned contact with friendly civil servants.

News agency and print journalists will now no longer be able to access the White House freely during business hours. A special list that allowed open entry Monday through Saturday has been removed, and a room that once served as permanent workspace for journalists has had its doors shuttered. As the Government press-service explained, individual lists for different events will now let reporters in. Correspondents will no longer be provided with any technical facilities.

Media personnel are also barred from the affordable employee cafeterias, although officials have promised free food if the start of work is delayed by unforeseeable reasons.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta believes President Vladimir Putin’s coming accession to the post of Prime Minister is directly tied to the crack-down on transparent access to the White House.

Igor Yakovenko, the head of the Russian Union of Journalists, shared his thoughts with the Sobkor®ru news agency, and agreed with that assessment:

“This is a serious step backwards for openness in the executive branch, and is connected with Vladimir Putin’s relocation into the Government,” he said. “This is his signature style of communication with the press, formed in his years of work at the KGB. Evidently, for a professional intelligence agent, words are an attribute to be concealed, and communication with the press is perceived as a special forces operation. And this style will continue in one form or another, regardless of any formal changes. This is a minus, but there’s no catastrophe in it, since the information landscape in the country will be determined by other factors, and not formal rules.”

As the Kommersant newspaper reports, the White House press-service explains the new changes as a response to the technological “progress in the methods of disseminating information.” The director of the press-service, Aleksandra Zharova, commented in a statement that all official reports and press-releases will be sent by facsimile and email to the mass-media outlets, and will be published immediately on the agency website.

Accredited journalists have had free access to the White House building, including technical facilities, since the attempted coup of August 1991, when hard-line Communists attempted to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev.

In a press-release, the organization, which represents over 600,000 journalists worldwide, described a rising “blitz” of intellectual property lawsuits levied by the Russian government against independent media outlets.

“Under the pretence of concern over piracy issues the government is waging a new campaign to silence its media critics,” said Aidan White, the IFJ General Secretary.

The Russian Union of Journalists (RUJ) has already entered talks with Microsoft, with the aims of either providing free software licenses to the poorest Russian media, or providing the programs at a discount.

The IJF has written to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s Chief Executive, asking the company to quickly review the proposal made by RUJ, and to put it into effect as soon as possible. Such a decision would be a win-win situation for Microsoft, according to the press-release.

The RUJ estimates that some 90% of Russian mass-media use pirated software, and that Microsoft loses some $150 million per year due to piracy. Providing 3500 of Russia’s poorest mass-media with free software licenses for a total of 35,000 computers, and arranging a three-year discount deal with other groups would help the company recover lost revenue.

Further Reading:

Computers Seized from Independent Newspaper in Togliatti

Silence in Samara

Piracy Charges to Pressure Critics