Freedom of speech is under more than attack in Russia, it is under a death threat. Last Friday, Ivan Safronov, a retired colonel and military affairs correspondent for the Russian newspaper Kommersant, died after falling from a window in his apartment building. Safronov wrote on sensitive topics, including abuses in the army, defence technology testing failures, and Russia's arms deals with countries such as Syria and Iran.
Although prosecutors were quick to open a criminal investigation into Safronov's death, this will likely do little to deter the enemies of Russian journalists from conducting future attacks. Of the 13 contract-style murders of journalists in Putin's Russia, none of the killers has been brought to justice; in most cases, the authorities have failed even to undertake a meaningful investigation. All 13 were apparently killed in connection with their work. Many more reporters have suffered physical attacks, criminal prosecution and persistent harassment.
Reporting on Chechnya has always been dangerous. Putin felt acutely the power of the press in Chechnya - televised images of the first war and its impact played a crucial role in turning public opinion against the war - and took pains to close Chechnya to all outside scrutiny. In October, Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist at Novaya Gazeta known for her fearless reporting on Chechnya, was gunned down, apparently to silence her forthcoming article on abuses by pro-Kremlin Chechen leaders. However, Chechnya is not the only issue that reporters in Russia cover at their own risk. Investigations into sensitive areas of government policy and, especially corruption and business practices, have also proven hazardous to journalists' health.
Attacks on journalists are crimes not only against individuals but against free speech itself, for such attacks and the failure of the government to protect journalists can have a chilling effect on the entire press corps. The Committee to Protect Journalists rates Russia the third most dangerous country in the world for journalists, after Iraq and Afghanistan, a designation that should outrage and embarrass Russian officials into action - but which might perversely please those who wish to intimidate the press.
Russia is not only a dangerous beat for journalists; it is an ever more restrictive one. Increasingly, critical press is deemed criminal. Under Putin, the Kremlin has brought the media in Russia firmly to heel in a series of carefully-orchestrated raids and takeovers that resulted in all national television stations and most national newspapers controlled by the Kremlin or pro-Kremlin companies. Journalists face criminal penalties including fines, corrective labour and jail time for offences such as libel, insult and insulting a public official.
Recent changes to the law on extremism designate certain kinds of libel against government officials and printing "justifications of terrorism" as criminally extremist acts which could result in the closure of newspapers that print them. In February, Russia's highest court upheld the liquidation of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, a human rights organisation, in part for failing to distance itself from its director Stanislav Dmitrievsky. Last year, a court convicted Dmitrievsky, editor of the group's newspaper, for "inciting racial or ethnic hatred" for publishing statements of Chechen rebel leaders calling for international negotiations to end the conflict and for voters not to re-elect Putin.
Safronov's death came just a month after a February 1 news conference in which Putin acknowledged the persecution of journalists and pledged to "do everything to protect the press corps." So far, things aren't going all that well. In the month since Putin's pledge, police raided the North Caucasus office of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting and forcibly committed an independent editor of an independent weekly in being held on spurious criminal charges to a psychiatric hospital. A court ordered Kommersant to pay compensation to the newly elected Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov for printing a critical article about him; and a journalist in the Vladimir region was tried for criminal defamation after making remarks about the region's governor in an internet chat room.
Putin's February pledge to protect journalists is welcome, though long overdue. But so far, and especially in light of Safronov's recent suspicious death, it rings hollow. At stake is not only the last vestige of Russia's press freedom, but also the lives of its journalists.
