Attack on Journalists

PROTEST OF ANGST AND DESPAIR 

RUSSIAN JOURNALISTS UNDER ATTACK & PUSHED BEYOND

By Stephen Wilson

 

Irina Slavina a Russian journalist burned herself
to death after police harassed her.

            "Have you heard about the latest news? A journalist felt under so much pressure because of harassment by the police that she took her life. They had been harassing her for ages and raided her house taking away all her computers and equipment. That is like depriving somebody of their means to a livelihood. If this person was poor they couldn't afford to buy new equipment. I can understand why she was driven to take her own life. I mean if this pressure from the authorities comes day in and day out, it does something to your psyche. I can understand why she did this," stated a teacher to me who had also done a stint in journalism. I don't have permission to name this journalist and will simply call her 'Marina'.

But Marina, who expressed a lot of empathy about the journalist, told me she thought that the journalist had practically been pushed beyond the limits not to mention being placed on some sort of blacklist. It is a grim story. A Russian journalist, Irina Slavina, an Editor in Chief of Koza press News, went to a police station and burnt herself to death in protest against relentless police persecution. She had declared in a statement published on Facebook that, 'For my death I ask you to blame the Russian Federation.' 

The police had raided her apartment the day before her suicide. She complained that, "They took away what they found - all the flash-cards, my laptop, my daughter's laptop, the computer, phone,and not just mine, but also my husband's. A bunch of notes was taken. I'm left without a means of production.'

This police raid seemed to be the last straw. In an act of abject despair she killed herself. Well before this the police had often raided her home looking for any brochures, leaflets or invoices linked to the pro democracy movement of the exiled Mikhail Khodorkovsky. She also faced charges of 'disrespect for the authorities', and promoting 'Fake News'. {where have we heard this so many times? In Trump's America!} It was not just the raids, but the manner they were accomplished. They were done in an arrogant and humiliating way designed to demean her. Vladim Osechkin, a human rights defender, stated. 'The blood is on the hands of Putin and his officials. This raid obviously drove her to suicide. The fact this is a complete crime under article 110 of the Legal Codex.'

 

A WORSENING ATMOSPHERE

 

Doing serious political journalism in Russia is highly problematic. It is true that countless people in Russia criticize Putin and the authorities. But it is one thing to express such opinions and another to openly print a sharp criticism in the press. A journalist can be easily targeted, harassed, threatened, fired and in the worst cases, murdered by poison or guns. What has made the atmosphere in Russia more tense this Autumn are three major events:

1. The new sentence of historian Yuri Dmitri of Memorial to 13 years imprisonment on alleged charges of sexual abuse which had been previously refuted by courts.

2. The poisoning of Navalny, the opposition candidate that Putin has intimidated.

3. The recent suicide of the journalist Irina Slavina. 

And those incidents are just the most well-known cases. If you investigate further you will hear of constant examples of physical attacks, detention and harassment of opposition figures. All those attempts are designed to psychologically disorientate and demoralize any form of questioning. The aim is to foster 'a strategy of tension', in a war of nerves'. If people live in such fear, they will be loathe to express any disagreeable opinion never mind join any opposition movements.  

 

ENDLESS EX-JOURNALISTS

 

What you can't help noticing is the endless number of 'ex-journalists ' in Russia. Despite having trained as a professional journalist, they have given up or abandoned it. I have never encountered so many ex-journalists as in Moscow. There are so many that I wondered if it was some kind of stepping stone to another aspiring career. For example, one woman who trained as a journalist, Alesia Losminskaya, does not currently do journalism. Instead she makes toys and teaches Yoga. She once told me, "I don't want to work in a profession where I just have to write what others demand of me." And 'Marina' who has worked in journalism and stated political journalism was too dangerous. She also mainly teaches.

 

Doing any kind of investigative journalism here is hardly easy. When I try to interview people I often come across a lot of fear. "Don't mention my name. No I don't want you to write about me in relation to this case." For instance, when I tried to interview a supporter of the wrongfully imprisoned music teacher Konstantin Chavdarov who had been sentenced to 9 years imprisonment on allegations of sexual abuse, I was practically stonewalled. The person seemed so distrustful and paranoid that I felt I had met someone from another planet. She would not mention a single word about the case. I explained, "I'm a Scot working for a paper in Chicago," but was met with an incredulous, "How can that be? How can someone who is Scottish be working for an American newspaper?" It was a lost cause. 

And this is hardly the only reticent response. The standard answer is often, "A foreign journalist can easily leave, but we have to stay here". Well, I'm not sure it is that simple. Part of the deeply rooted fear is readily explicable because of the legacy of Soviet repression where so many walls had ears. The fear still goes on especially among the older generation. I recall all the difficulties in trying to arrange getting a new room in 1994 in Kishinev. The kindly old Russian kept whispering in cafes and preferred to talk loud only in secluded places. I was only wanting to rent a room, but this man was scared of being overheard and arrested for simply talking to a foreigner. You have to be born or have spent a long time in Russia to comprehend such fear. Andrei a Russian journalist told me that the relatively free press in Russia of the 1990's had largely disappeared. It is far more difficult to do any reporting in Russia than then.

 

MYTH OF PRESS FREEDOM IN AMERICA

 

A constant problem is that the western press oversimplifies the narrative of abusing the press in Russia. The crude presumption is that in contrast to lack of press freedom in Russia, you have press freedom in the West. As if Russian officials are the only ones to repress journalists. But in America, journalists have already been targeted for their 'fake news' and dubbed 'enemies of the people". Look at the fate of two Journalists who worked in Russia called Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames. Their genre of satire was not only eventually repressed in Russia, in 2009, but they have been even more viciously attacked in America. They have been accused of sexual abuse without any real concrete evidence or reference to facts. The journalists who made the allegations did not even carry out any investigation. The real reasons for a mass campaign of smear against the journalists is because their work sharply exposed the relentless corruption and abuse of corporate interests in both America and Russia. 

Those journalists did not take kindly to Matt Taibbi's work 'Hate, Incorporated, How and why the press make us hate one another'. Taibbi wrote 'Media is entertainment, and is designed to make us hate one another. Hate's a profitable business, by the way'. If satire is not a legal defense in Russia, it is hardly forgiven or so tolerated in 'the land of the free'.

Marina told me "Perhaps we can get away with writing on culture or safe subjects". Which might be one of the reasons why it is difficult for a Russian journalist to obtain a job covering film reviews or performances at the theater. Practically every journalist would relish such an opportunity.

 

Perhaps it is easier for Russians to write articles about local weddings or fishing trips in the village! Most of the former Russian journalists I have met have been working for marketing agencies or as teachers of Russian!  It is a bit safer than courageous and critical journalism. That is why we need to hold up a candle to tragic fighters such as Irina Slavina!

She was one of a kind!