#2
The Times (UK)
22 March 2002
Editorial
A cowed press
Old Soviet habits are stifling the news about Chechnya

Anna Politkovskaya is not a name known outside Russia. If President Putin had his way, she would not be known inside the country either. Her searing accounts of the corruption, intimidation and brutalities perpetrated by Russian soldiers in Chechnya are now almost the only source of information about what is really happening there. Her reporting has been at huge personal risk: in 40 visits to Chechnya she has been harassed, arrested, threatened with rape and torture and forced to flee Russia after vile hints of a car “accident”. But like the dissidents who refused to be silenced by an oppressive Soviet state a generation ago, she has continued to speak out. Yesterday Index on Censorship, the press freedom lobby, saluted her with an award for the most courageous defence of freedom of expression.

Like Andrei Sakharov, Ms Politkovskaya has been drawn into a lone confrontation with the State by its refusal to admit abuse. She has no political agenda and has reported also on the extremism and criminal connections of the rebel leaders. But she has also exposed what the military command is desperate to hide: the conscripts’ lack of training, equipment and discipline, the collusion of Russian officials in the kidnappings and protection rackets, the extortion of bribes from civilians, targeting of their houses and property and the indiscriminate killings, including, most recently, the burning of a bus to hide the evidence that its civilian passengers were shot by mistake.

President Putin has achieved much in the past year. He has brought his country stability, increased its wealth, pushed through vital tax, judicial and land reforms and confronted old prejudices to reorientate Russia towards the West and join the fight against international terrorism. This has come, however, at some cost in press and individual freedom. There is little tolerance of dissent, and old Soviet habits are beginning to reassert themselves: self-censorship by journalists, official pressure on those who will not toe the line and a gradual retreat from the democratic hubbub of the Yeltsin years. One by one independent newspapers and television stations have been suppressed. Only Novaya Gazeta, the small liberal bi-weekly carrying Ms Politkovskaya’s reports, still speaks out on Chechnya; now the courts have imposed record libel damages in a clear attempt to bankrupt and silence it.

Most Russians care little about press freedom. For them it is more important that pensions are paid, corruption curbed and crime reduced. Most do not think much about what is happening in Chechnya. But this war is a wound that Mr Putin has been unable to stanch; and the dirtier it becomes, the greater the danger that it will infect the body politic. Keeping it out of the news is one thing; persecuting those who report the truth is reprehensible. Russia is fighting a legitimate war against terror; but this does not excuse any barbarity in Chechnya. Only a free press can insist on the distinction.