More than 100 people gathered at a central Moscow square Wednesday to mark the death last month of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the end of the traditional Russian 40-day period of mourning, AP reported.
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November 16, 2006A police officer sought by authorities in connection with the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter who uncovered abuses against civilians in Chechnya, denied allegations of his involvement in the murder, according to an interview published Saturday, The Associated Press reports.
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November 15, 2006The media rights group Reporters Without Borders has called for an international inquiry into the murder of Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya.
Politkovskaya was gunned down in Moscow last month. The Russian Prosecutor-General’s office, which is in charge of the investigation, says it is pursuing several possible motives.
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November 7, 2006Colleagues of Anna Politkovskaya, supported by the independent Russian Union of Journalists and hundreds of domestic and foreign media outlets, published a newspaper Thursday devoted to the slain journalist who focused on uncovering torture, abductions and other abuses against civilians in Chechnya, the Associated Press news agency reports.
The 16-page tabloid included tributes to the journalist and rights activist, a sampling of her work, a list of 211 journalists killed in Russia between 1992 and the present, and her mother’s recollections.
Raisa Mazepa recalled begging her daughter to be more cautious in her work.
“I remember she told me then: ’I understand, of course, that the Sword of Damocles is always hanging over me. I understand that, but I don’t want to give up,’†her mother was quoted as saying by Politkovskaya’s newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Thursday’s newspaper also contained a rebuke to President Vladimir Putin, who on the day of Politkovskaya’s funeral played down her influence on political life as “very minor.†It reprinted government instructions to act to correct the problems raised in her stories. The paper said close to 40 criminal investigations had been opened on the basis of Politkovskaya’s work.
Politkovskaya was gunned down in the entrance to her apartment building Oct. 7. Thursday’s newspaper said investigators were concentrating on three main scenarios for the killing, but it did not elaborate.
In an unpublished essay or speech found on Politkovskaya’s computer, she described how journalists were made “outcasts†in Russia — never invited to official events, forced to meet with officials only clandestinely. Most journalists here, she said, were putting on a “jesters’ show,†whose only task was to report positively on Putin.
“What have I … done? I only wrote about what I witnessed, and nothing more,†Politkovskaya wrote in the piece, which was published in the special paper Thursday.
“I purposely have not written about all the other ’charms’ of the path I have chosen — the poisonings, the detentions, the threats in letters and on the Internet, the promises to kill … I think that is all trivial.
â€The main thing is to have the chance to do the main thing: describe life, receive in the editorial offices visitors who have nowhere else to go with their troubles.“
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October 27, 2006Condoleezza Rice on Saturday delivered a symbolic rebuke to Russia over shrinking press freedoms even as she courted President Vladimir Putin for help punishing Iran over its nuclear program, The Associated Press news agency reports.
Rice made a point of scheduling an interview with Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where a Anna Politkovskaya had worked before her murder this month. Rice also met with the reporter’s son.
Rice’s one-day trip to Moscow followed talks in Asia last week over North Korea’s nuclear test on Oct. 9. Russia voted for U.N. penalties against North Korea after the test, and the United States is seeking Russian cooperation for an upcoming vote on sanctions against Iran.
Yet even before Rice arrived in the Russian capital, her Russian counterpart said Moscow will not allow the Security Council to be used for punitive measures against Iran. Russia, however, was ready to discuss ways to pressure Iran into accepting broader international oversight of its nuclear program, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
“Any measures of influence should encourage creating conditions for talks,†Lavrov said in an interview with the Kuwaiti News Agency KUNA that was posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry Web site Saturday.
“We won’t be able to support and will oppose any attempts to use the Security Council to punish Iran or use Iran’s program in order to promote the ideas of regime change there,†according to the interview Friday.
A draft resolution is expected to be introduced in the Security Council early this week, and diplomats have said they would seek limited penalties for Tehran’s refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.
Rice’s decision to meet with Novaya Gazeta editors and reporters was a reminder to Putin of the widening rift between Russia and the U.S. over what the Bush administration sees as a rollback of democratic gains under the Russian president.
She met privately with Putin later Saturday.
Previewing her message to the newspaper editors, Rice told reporters traveling with her that she wanted to speak to one of a shrinking number of “independent voices†in Russian media.
“The fate of journalists in Russia is a major concern,†Rice said. “Anna Politkovskaya was a particularly well-known and well-respected journalist so I think it’s important to note that.â€
Politkovskaya repeatedly had accused Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov’s security forces of abducting, torturing and killing innocent people. Her newspaper posthumously published her last story that described alleged torture by the Kremlin-backed Chechen security services.
Politkovskaya, a sharp critic of Putin and the conduct of the Kremlin and of Russia’s war in Chechnya, was found shot dead at her Moscow apartment building.
Since Putin’s election more than six years ago, he has presided over what critics have called a steady rollback in press freedoms won since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Top independent television stations have been shut down and print media are under growing pressure from officials.
Putin said the killers had done the Russian government no favor. The killing “inflicts much greater damage to the government than any of her writing,†he said after the killing.
The media rights group Reporters Without Borders has called Putin one of the world’s press freedom “predators.â€
Rice’s last Asian stop was in Beijing, North Korea’s traditional ally, where she met with a Chinese government envoy just back from a hastily arranged visit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Rice said the envoy, State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, told her nothing that confirmed news reports about conciliatory moves from the North.
“Councilor Tang did not tell me that Kim Jong Il either apologized for the test or said that he would never test again,†Rice said, adding that she does not know the source of widely circulated South Korean media reports to the contrary.
“I don’t know whether or not Kim Jong Il said any such thing. But the Chinese … in a fairly thorough briefing to me about the talks, said nothing,†that confirms it, Rice said.
Lavrov, in the Kuwaiti interview, urged the U.S. and North Korea to settle issues such as U.S.-imposed financial restrictions in order to clear the way for international talks to resume on the North’s nuclear program.
“Both sides should show flexibility,†he said.
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October 24, 2006Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued his sternest warning to Georgia so far, telling European Union leaders that Tbilisi was risking bloodshed by seeking to regain control over breakaway regions.
The Reuters news agency reports that Putin sounded a conciliatory note on energy cooperation with the 25-nation EU, agreeing to negotiate on common principles in a new strategic partnership agreement and giving an assurance that foreign oil and gas investments would be respected. But he firmly rebuffed EU criticism of Russia’s blockade of its former Soviet neighbor, saying Georgia had provoked the escalation in tension by staging a military buildup around the Russian-backed regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
“It is moving in the direction of bloodshed because the Georgian leadership is seeking to restore its control through military means and they are quite open about that,†Putin told a joint news conference after dinner with EU leaders. Georgia’s foreign minister accused Putin of deliberately misrepresenting the tensions between Georgia and Russia, and insulting the intelligence of his European colleagues.
“The government of Georgia and the people of Georgia have no intention to use force against its citizens as repeatedly stated,†Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili told reporters in Tbilisi. “This is pure fiction and the Russian president knows this but chooses to presume that the international community is ignorant,†he said.
The Europeans delivered a united message that Russia must give European firms a fair chance to access its huge energy resources or risk an investor exodus. “We need to develop mutual trust that requires transparency, the rule of law, reciprocity, nondiscrimination, market opening and market access,†European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
Putin said he believed there were no issues in energy cooperation that could not be resolved. He assured the Europeans that a decision to exclude foreign capital from development of the Arctic Shtokman gas field did not signal a change in rules for foreign investors and said Moscow would respect Shell’s license to operate its Sakhalin-2 project, which has been hit by Russian environmental charges.
Russian and European officials said Putin sought to tackle EU criticism head-on by inviting the leaders from the outset to question him on any sensitive issue. Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said he had raised the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of Putin, as well as Moscow’s treatment of Georgia and the harassment of Georgians in Russia.
Russia cut transport and postal links with Georgia after Tbilisi briefly detained four Russian army officers on spying charges last month. Some Georgians have been deported from Russia, Georgian businesses have been shut down and police have asked some schools to provide lists of pupils with Georgian-sounding names. Moscow has been irked by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s pursuit of NATO and EU membership, while Georgia accuses Russia of backing separatists by giving aid and Russian passports to residents of the breakaway territories.
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October 21, 2006Reporters Without Borders today asked the French government to strip Russian leader Vladimir Putin of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour that President Chirac awarded him just one month ago, on 22 September, the RSF web-site reports.
The request was addressed to the Council of State and to Chirac, as Grand Master of the Order of the Legion of Honour.
“The Legion of Honour is France’s highest award and the Grand Cross is the highest rank within the order,†the press freedom organization said. “We think Vladimir Putin is not worthy of this decoration and for this reason we have asked President Chirac and the Council of State to withdraw it.â€
Reporters Without Borders continued: “It beggars belief that Putin has been given one of the greatest honors France can bestow on a person. A total of 21 journalists have been murdered in Russia with almost total impunity since he became president. Chechnya is black hole for news coverage. Putin waited 48 hours before making any comment about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, one of the few journalists to cover the Chechen conflict, and then he chose to say ’her impact on Russian political life was minimal’.â€
The organization added: “The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Russia twice, in February 2005 and on 12 October 2006, for its actions in Chechnya. It is outrageous to say Putin has rendered service to causes that France defends. We do not recognize France’s fundamental values in Putin’s discourse — when he says, for example, that he wants to wipe out Chechen terrorists in the shit-house, or when he describes the independent press as means of mass disinformation and tools for combatting the state, or when he tells a French journalist who asks him about Chechnya to come and get circumcised in Moscow so nothing grows back.â€
Acclaimed internationally for her courage and professionalism as a journalist, Politkovskaya was gunned down in her central Moscow apartment building on 7 October. Aged 48, she had worked for the biweekly Novaya Gazeta since 1999. She was supposed to have handed in an article, with photos, about torture in Chechnya for the 9 October issue. It never arrived at the newspaper. In her last book, “Russia according to Putin,†published this year in France, she not only criticized atrocities in Chechnya but also corruption and human rights violations in Russia.
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Russia does not have the same kind of democracy as in other European countries, Finland’s Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen has said. Russia has democratic institutions, but the way that they work is not the same as in other countries of Western Europe, he said.
Vanhanen made his comments in Brussels in a joint interview with three Nordic newspapers: Helsingin Sanomat, the Swedish Dagens Nyheter, and the Danish Politiken.
“They say themselves that they have a democracy of their own kind. I don’t remember the exact definitionsâ€, Vanhanen said when asked if there is a functioning democracy in Russia.
“It is not the same kind of democracy as in other European countries. Russia has democratic institutions, but the way that they work is not the same as we have in Western Europe.â€
Vanhanen was cautious in his assessment of democratic development in Russia.
“Our experiences in the development of democratic models of action and political parties are from 100 years back, and it is not easy to give advice on it. It is important for Russia to adhere to its commitments in the development of democracy.â€
Vanhanen again rejected criticism over the invitation of Russia’s President Putin to a dinner during the unofficial European Union summit in Lahti on Friday.
The visit comes at a sensitive time. In addition to the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, Russia has come under increasing criticism from the West over its treatment of neighboring Georgia.
Vanhanen said that thorny issues will also come up in Lahti, even though the main topics to be discussed with Putin are partnership questions and energy.
“If these questions are to be discussed, the only way to do it is to arrange an opportunity for a discussionâ€, he said.
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October 18, 2006
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