Glasnost defence foundation digest No. 613

29 April 2013

RUSSIA

Editors in Chelyabinsk Region revolt against regional administration’s approach to print media subsidizing

By Irina Gundareva, GDF correspondent in Urals Federal Distict

The editors of 24 district newspapers in the region of Chelyabinsk have urged Prosecutor Aleksandr Voitovich to check whether the regional administration-approved new rules of subsidy distribution among the print media for 2013-2015 are consistent with the RF Budget Code.

In line with the new rules, not a single municipal or district newspaper can hope for any financial support from the regional budget because of failure to meet all the five officially established eligibility criteria. In contrast, Guberniya Publishers’, a co-founder of 36 city and district newspapers, including its official mouthpiece, Guberniya, is in a position to claim – alone – the whole of the 35 million roubles earmarked in subsidies for the media.

Significantly enough, Guberniya Publishers’ was established by the advertising agency Sosedi Ltd., owned by Irina Filichkina, whose family is known to control the entire market of pro-governor media, including OR Guberniya, Guberniya Publishers, Granada Press Ltd. and many others.

The regional administration’s Analysis and Prognoses Centre, the developer of the new system of media subsidizing, has worked in close contact with the Filichkin family, which holds the district newspapers in an iron grip. Each story about the governor and his team is thoroughly censored prior to publishing, and the editors are required to seek special authorization to publish anything on current politics; disobedience is fraught with immediate replacement.

The editors described the new system to the prosecutor as “misapplication of funds”. Speaking more frankly in private conversations, they characterized it as “a move by the authorities to reward power-affiliated private media companies for singing the regional government’s praises”.

The prosecutor’s office has not yet furnished any official reply to the appeal.

Police in Omsk scan journalists, environmentalists and orphan rights defenders for potential status of “foreign agents”

By Georgy Borodyansky, GDF correspondent in Siberian Federal District

Police in Omsk have been checking on several groups of residents, including activists of protest actions and journalists covering such actions in the media, in connection with their suspected involvement in the activities of foreign-financed organisations. One of the city’s six districts, Sovetsky, for example, is the home area of 16 suspected “foreign agents”, according to the prosecutor’s office.

The prominent human rights defender and blogger Viktor Korb published a list of such suspects after the district police officer visited him at home, showing a prosecutorial instruction issued for the police to follow. The document, which Korb photographed, read as follows:

“In implementation of an urgent mission ordered by the Prosecutor of Omsk, you are hereby assigned to request explanations from the following members of non-governmental organisations, including unregistered public movements…”

The questions the suspects were supposed to answer included the goals and objectives of their organisations, their funding sources (including foreign-based ones), the way they have expended sponsors’ money in 2011-2013, etc.

Apart from Korb, the list featured the names of his wife, journalist Tatyana Ilyina; Siberian Labour Confederation President Vassily Starostin, the founder of the Outcasts’ Association helping former inmates of children’s homes to obtain housing they are entitled to have under the law; Sergei Kostarev, chairman of the NGO Environmental Committee, and a group of his fellow activists opposed to construction of a silicon factory within the city boundaries …

According to prosecutors’ information, the group of “foreign agents financed from abroad” consists for the most part of defenders of orphans’ rights, as well as of green movement activists trying to protect their city from different environmental hazards. This information, which comes from unknown sources, is anything but accurate. Prof. Kostarev, for example, has written in his blog that the anti-silicon movement is not an organisation at all: it unites people resisting the launch of yet another ecologically unsafe industrial project in Omsk. Opponents of this dubious plan are numerous – more than 25,000 people – which makes the blogger doubt that law enforcement will have enough time and staff to interview them all.

The list of suspects also features the name of journalist Leonid Mutovkin, the author of the book “Cracks on the Pedestal” describing the life and work of Omsk ex-Governor Leonid Polezhayev.

No information has been available as to similar lists of foreign agents compiled in other city districts, but your correspondent is among the suspects: my district police officer has come to my home, too, for “explanations”, which I declined to give with reference to Article 51 of the RF Constitution, stipulating that “No one shall be obliged to testify against oneself, one’s spouse or one’s immediate relatives”. When the officer was gone, I recollected that at different times I’d been a member of three non-for-profit associations – October Children, Young Pioneers and the Young Communist League; but that was long, long ago.

“Extremist materials”, including greetings to ex-President Medvedev, temporarily “amnestied” in Omsk

By Georgy Borodyansky, GDF correspondent in Siberian Federal District

Law enforcers in Omsk will have to try once again to prove that journalist and blogger Viktor Korb’s essay “Contract vs. Norm” is an “extremist” publication. As we reported in digest 604-605, it was labelled extremist – along with articles by the prominent political writers Yuri Afanasyev, Vladislav Inozemtsev and others – under a decision passed by the Central district court in Omsk last November, of which Korb learned by a pure chance three months later (see Digest 604-605). Curiously enough, the list of materials banned for publication included greetings to the-then President Dmitry Medvedev by a Defence Ministry special task force unit; the greetings were posted on his official website in August 2011.

All those texts were reprinted (in September 2011) by the “extremist” newspaper Radikalnaya Politika issued by the prominent oppositionist Boris Stomakhin; seized together with the entire print run and then removed from all the websites that reposted them. Viktor Korb assumes that was done to reinforce the positions of the prosecution in a legal case involving the same charges that had been brought against him earlier and had resulted in his five-year confinement to a tight-security penal colony. In November 2012, Stomakhin was arrested again, accused of “public justification of terrorism” (Article 205), “calls for acts of extremism” (Article 280), and “instigation of enmity and hatred” (Article 282 of the RF Criminal Code). Korb suspects the investigators have been putting pressure on the courts to get him convicted in connection with the above-mentioned issue of Radikalnaya Politika.

Trials like this have been held behind closed doors all across this country, with the convicted persons staying, as a rule, unaware about the decisions passed, Korb told the Glasnost Defence Foundation. The verdict returned in his case was not published anywhere; it surfaced by chance as late as February, after a revised blacklist of banned publications was posted on the Justice Ministry’s website.

In early April, Korb challenged the district court decision before the higher-standing regional court, which left it in force, however. Fortunately, the case was returned for review “in view of newly surfaced information”, which the blogger described in detail in a statement he filed with the district court to prove that the prosecutor’s statement of “the impossibility of identifying the authors’ names or places of residence” was not true – a fact that even District Judge Sosnin, the man who had passed the sentence in Korb’s case, was compelled to acknowledge. As a result, the verdict labelling the September 2011 issue of Radikalnaya Politika extremist was cancelled in full. Unless the prosecutor’s office challenges this decision within the next ten days, all the previously banned articles featured in the newspaper will be re-allowed for publication until the new trial is over. Hearings are scheduled to begin on 15 May. In the “spirit of the times”, Korb feels pretty pessimistic about their likely outcome. However, he believes “an important precedent has been created in challenging these kinds of cases, which the authorities have used to step up political repression in today’s Russia”.

KAZAKHSTAN

First issue of opposition newspaper Pravdivaya Gazeta seized

The first issue of a new newspaper, Pravdivaya Gazeta (PG), was released on 23 April, only to be seized by law enforcement hours later “in view of output data discrepancies”, according to the seizure protocol signed by Almaty Deputy Interior Department Head B. Akzharov. Failing to identify PG as a weekly newspaper, its editor has already been reprimanded by the Chamber of Books.

The way the PG staffers look at it, however, the true reason for this crackdown is that the newspaper featured the first part of a book by [oppositionist] Zamanbek Nurkadilov; an interview with Kazakhstani Communist Party leader Gaziz Aldamzharov; and an announcement of rallies of protest against the ongoing pension reform and utility service rate increases, due to be held in some Kazakhstani cities.

[Adil Soz Foundation report, 24 April]

OUR CONTRIBUTORS

Government officials keep the press at arm’s length

By Anna Seleznyova, GDF correspondent in Far Eastern Federal District

Natalya Ostrovskaya, a correspondent for the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda na Dalnem Vostoke, is a journalist widely known in and beyond Russia’s Far East. Her publications and independent investigations have earned her high popularity and an impressive number of journalistic awards. But she, too, has seen the authorities shutting the doors of their conference rooms in her face amid bombastic pronouncements about “the need for greater openness”.

Here is a brief account of two recent episodes she recalled.

“My own and others’ experience shows that the more the authorities talk about a problem, the less soluble this problem becomes. For example, the Maritime Region administration and Governor Vladimir Miklushevsky in person, claiming deeply concerned about their own ‘isolation from the people’, have tirelessly spoken for nearly a year now about the need to make their work ‘as open and transparent as possible’. Actually, they have established special public structures to tackle the problem – an ‘open government’ and expert councils involving all sorts of activists from different walks of life, with whom they have even met and conferred – only to label them liars later. If nothing was said either before or after, then public activists and the press, as well as other ‘outsiders’, were not supposed to know anything at all about certain government measures.

“I attempted to get admitted to one government conference the other day, of which I’d learned quite by chance: Alexei Pochekunin, acting head of the regional administration’s Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Department, had called a meeting of specialists to discuss an important long-term issue – the establishment of protected zones around national parks and other wildlife areas. After a business trip to the Lazovsky District, where amateur hunters had come into conflict with The Tiger’s Call national park over unsettled land disputes, I knew for certain the discussion during the conference was going to be high-toned.

“‘You won’t be admitted,’ a polite lady from the press service told me quietly. ‘It’s a working conference, so Pochekunin has decided to close it to the press. He is the boss here, you know.’

“‘Out you go!’ Pochekunin himself told me a while later, blocking the doorway with his chest.

“Definitely, the official was not in the mood to discuss regional power’s ‘openness and transparency’, public attention to the land problem or the journalist’s right of free access to information. How to hold a conference was one of his department’s internal affairs, he told me. It was something like a family affair, he said, so I should take care not to intrude upon their privacy…

“Not allowed a step farther than the reception room, I had to retreat from the none-too-hospitable Natural Resources Department. Maybe I should file a complaint with the governor, Pochekunin’s immediate superior claiming to seek maximum possible transparency within the administration, I thought to myself. He might call a meeting of the ‘open government’ or the expert council on environmental protection to assess the lawfulness of his report’s behaviour. I would be eager to attend such a meeting to hear what they’d have to say on the subject. But unfortunately, I might be left behind closed doors again…”

The second episode recalled by Natalya Ostrovskaya refers to the trial over those responsible for the 2008 accident on the Nerpa (Seal) nuclear-powered submarine. The true circumstances of the accident, the judicial decisions passed, and military specialists’ and sailors’ protests against those decisions have all received extensive coverage in the press.

“…In the second Nerpa trial, which follows full acquittal of the accused in the first one, special attention is being paid to the non-disclosure of state secrets,” Ostrovskaya said. “Fearing that someone might disclose those secrets and that reporters might instantly pass that information on to the general public, Judge Daniil Loginov decided to close the proceedings to the press. This is quite surprising, since the hearings, which began in mid-January, originally proceeded openly – but the nearer the final, the more concerned the judge seems to be over the state secrets, and the harder he is trying to protect those from the ‘enemy journalists’.

“In real terms, though, the authorities are taking pains to prevent ‘outsiders’, i.e., the public, from drawing independent conclusions about the reasons for the tragedy on the Nerpa submarine and the poor quality of the investigation carried out by the Pacific Fleet’s Military Prosecutor’s Office.

“In the course of spontaneous, unrehearsed courtroom debates between the parties, information has been surfacing that appears to be much more important than any state secret. Listening to the way the parties say and intone phrases while presenting their arguments, one can instantly see who is right and honest and who is only concerned with the esprit de corps. If the judges or government officials were to decide, they would evidently add court pleadings and working- conference debates to the categories of classified information from which the journalists are to be effectively barred. To be sure, they would do so while continuing to loudly call for ‘maximum openness’.”

NEWS FROM PARTNERS

Volunteers tidy up Journalists’ House in Yekaterinburg

By Vladimir Golubev, GDF correspondent in Urals Federal District

Following an established tradition, the Central Urals media community on 26 April held a day of voluntary work at 1, Clara Zetkin St. in Yekaterinburg, the current location of the Sverdlovsk House of Journalists.

About two dozen colleagues arrived from Nizhniye Seryogi, Rezh, Sosva, Sloboda Turinskaya, Zarechny and even Chelyabinsk to tidy up the old mansion in downtown Yekaterinburg and the piece of land it stands on.

“Today, we are planning to thoroughly clean up the area in and around the Journalists’ House from the old leaves and rubbish lying there in heaps,” one of the action organisers, Dmitry Fedechkin from the governor’s administration, wrote in his blog. “In a word, we are to fully prepare the site for specialists to walk in and start repairs.”

The building, which is more than a hundred years old, needs to be overhauled from bottom to top: the previous tenants did not spare it much, despite its status of an architectural monument. Building workers will have to cope with a fairly complex task – to preserve the original house design while allowing space for a museum of journalism, rooms for news conferences, seminars, creative workshops and discussions, and a small restaurant.

The voluntary work day in April is the first in a series of planned media community actions to speed up the Journalists’ House reconstruction.

Letters

Dear colleagues:

The [Ulyanovsk] governor’s press service recently reported that the regional administration has stopped admitting journalists to apparatus meetings chaired by the governor – allegedly because these are shown online in the Internet. I see this as a clear law violation: the relevant law does not impose any such restrictions, if only because it was passed before the Internet became widely known. I am sure it’s up to a journalist to independently decide whether to attend a conference or to watch it online. What if the Internet fails or if someone doesn’t have a Web connection at home at all, or else it’s too slow? Does this mean the authorities will feel free to confer in secrecy in view of this kind of “technical problems”? As you understand, a reporter attending a conference in person is much better positioned to draw independent conclusions than anyone watching that conference on a PC monitor.

I intend to turn to the regional prosecutor’s office for comments and support, because the right of access to information is at stake. Could you please check this message in terms of its compliance with effective media legislation, so I could refer to it later?

Sergei Gogin, freelance journalist, city of Ulyanovsk.

The Glasnost Defence Foundation forwarded Mr. Gogin’s letter to colleagues from the Media Rights Defence Centre in Voronezh, whose legal adviser sent back the following comments:

“The decision taken by the [Ulyanovsk governor’s] press service violates the journalists’ rights guaranteed by Article 47 of the RF Media Law, which stipulates that ‘a journalist has the right… to visit state bodies and organisations, enterprises and institutions, public association bodies, or press services thereof’.

“In line with this law, a journalist is entitled to be personally present at events organised by government authorities. The law does not provide for any alternative way of exercising the said right.

“To be able to challenge the press service’s decision, one would have to have a written copy thereof. Alternatively, a journalist may attempt to attend a governor-chaired conference in person and, if not admitted, he may challenge such non-admittance in court with reference to Chapter 25 of the RF Code of Civil Procedure.”

[Margarita Ledovskikh, legal adviser, Media Rights Defence Centre]

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