#5
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
June 27, 2002
For Russians, press freedom more theory than fact
Putin's brand of democracy is different than the rest of the G8
By MARK MACKINNON
With a report from Associated Press

MOSCOW -- It was a chilly evening in March when Natalya Skryl, a reporter for the daily newspaper in the southern city of Taganrog, set out for the local prosecutor's office.

Known as a crusading journalist bent on pushing the limits of Russia's access-to-information laws, the 30-year-old reporter had made a few enemies with her dogged efforts.

On March 7, she stayed a little later than usual at the prosecutor's office, focused on a project her editors say consumed her: digging up information on a share dispute involving the city's pipemaking factory. She was also curious about the planned construction of a methanol terminal along the same stretch of coast on the Azov Sea. Her colleagues at Nashe Vremya (Our Time) say she was investigating allegations about bribery involving one or both projects.

After finishing her work, she decided to walk home, as she often did. She was set upon by thugs wielding iron bars, and died after a blow to the head. Her gold jewellery wasn't taken, her purse was left full of money.

Media watchdogs immediately classified Ms. Skryl as a "victim of her professional activities" -- a euphemism for journalists assassinated by those they work to expose.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived yesterday in Kananaskis, Alta., to take a seat alongside the leaders of the world's major democracies at the G8 summit. But Russian-style democracy is one where freedom of the press is a theory rather than a principle.

Activists charge that journalism has become Russia's most dangerous profession. Ms. Skryl was one of eight reporters killed since January, and among 36 killed in the past 2½ years. Another four are missing.

In many cases, reporters were killed or they vanished while investigating government corruption or links between big business and members of Russia's powerful organized crime groups.

"Because so many journalists have been killed in Russia recently as a result of their work, we ask . . . that a serious and timely inquiry is made into whether his death was linked to articles he published," Robert Menard, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders, wrote in an open letter to Russia's prosecutor-general.

Last December, Sergei Kalinovsky, senior editor of the Smolensk edition of the outspoken Moskovsky Komsomolets daily, disappeared. Although he was also the host of a popular TV program about crime in the region, "nobody in law enforcement did anything to find him," said Ruslan Gorevoi, a media activist with the Glasnost Defence Foundation.

Instead, the Smolensk prosecutor offered many versions of what might have happened to Mr. Kalinovsky, ranging from being the victim of Armenian gangs to having arranged his own disappearance for publicity reasons. In April, his body was found beside a lake after snow melted.

"It's really very dangerous to work as a journalist in Russia especially if you're covering organized crime or dare to criticize the authorities," Mr. Gorevoi said. "And when something happens to one, nothing is done to find what happened. It gives the impression that assassins are not really wanted [by the police]."

Mr. Gorevoi sees something more sinister at play than poor police work.

He, like many observers outside Russia, sees a connection between the physical attacks on journalists and a wider state pressure on the news media -- pressure that has replaced the outright censorship of the Soviet era.

Four days after Mr. Putin was inaugurated, for example, armed troopers in ski masks raided the offices of Russia's largest private media company, Media Most, whose newspapers and TV networks were outspoken critics of Mr. Putin during the 2000 election campaign. The company is now controlled by Gazprom, a state-owned oil company.

Next it was TV6, an independent and muckraking television station booted off the air last year after it ran a series of stories questioning Russia's war in Chechnya.

It was allowed to return to the airwaves only after accepting Kremlin-appointed overseers at the top of its management structure.

But risks to journalists, and journalistic freedom, predate the Putin administration. Yesterday, a Moscow court acquitted six men for lack of evidence in the 1994 killing of Dmitry Kholodov, a 27-year-old reporter who was investigating military corruption.

His death sparked nationwide condemnation and rattled reporters across the country.

Mr. Kholodov was probing allegations of corruption in the army's intelligence service in October, 1994, when an anonymous caller told him he could find evidence in a briefcase at a train station. When he opened the case in his office at Moskovsky Komsomolets, it exploded, killing him and wounding a colleague.

Prosecutors and Mr. Kholodov's parents said they would appeal the acquittal of the five former paratroopers and one businessman, which came after a 19-month trial and testimony from 300 witnesses.

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