Russia’s exports to its neighbors include repression of the media

The brutal slaying of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov outside the Kremlin is yet another sign of the crackdown on democracy taking place under President Vladimir Putin, one recently highlighted in the Reporters Without Borders’ 2015 global press-freedom rankings.
Russia has never been a bastion of press freedom, but in recent years the situation has become worse, according to international journalist-protection and human-rights organizations.

Unfortunately, Russia’s proclivity toward repressing journalists has spread across its borders.
Many countries in the region that have long looked to Moscow as a model have adopted Russia’s oppressive tactics against the press. Ukraine and my own country, Armenia, are examples.

Russia’s repression of journalists has been widely chronicled.

Groups such as Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom House and Human Rights Watch have ranked the world’s 180 countries in press freedom for decades.

Russia is typically ranked in the bottom fifth. It is an awful showing for a country that aspires to be a world power that others can respect, admire and imitate.

Reporters Without Borders’ 2015 global press-freedom rankings show Russia continuing to go in the wrong direction on the basic right that citizens ought to have to enjoy unfettered and uncensored information.

On the basis of Russia’s record in 2014, the Paris-based Reporters dropped the country four spots to 152nd in global press freedom — putting it in the bottom 16 percent of countries worldwide.

Press-freedom-watchdog organizations often offer commentaries that explain why they gave each country its ranking.

Reporters Without Borders said that in 2014 Russia continued its long-running campaign to eliminate media independence. A tool of choice was neutering independent news organizations by scaring them so much that they stopped running pieces questioning the establishment line. Another tool was forcing independents to sell out to Kremlin loyalists.  

In addition, Reporters Without Borders said, Russia blocked many websites critical of government policy or the country’s leaders and passed “another string of draconian laws” to rein in press freedom.   

Although Russia has succeeded in muzzling most of the traditional press – newspapers, radio and television — Internet journalists and bloggers continue to be a thorn in its side. That is because they are much more difficult to control than traditional media.

Aware that some bloggers critical of the establishment have huge followings, the government ordered Parliament to pass a bill requiring the registration of bloggers with more than 3,000 visitors a day.

The law specifies that those falling into this category will no longer be considered individual commentators but actual media outlets. Thus they will fall under tough laws that punish media for “inaccurate” information.

Press-freedom organizations around the world were quick to condemn the legislation. “This law will cut the number of critical voices and opposition voices on the Internet,” said Galina Arapova, director of the Moscow-based Mass Media Defense Center.

As bad as Russia’s latest round of anti-press tactics are, they can’t compare with the ultimate tactic that has been used far too often to silence journalists in Russia: murder.

Fifty-six Russian journalists have died since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Authorities have confirmed 36 of the deaths as murders. Some deaths that were declared suicides or accidents also may have been murders, journalist-protection organizations say.

In addition to the dozens of journalists killed, a lot of other journalists have been attacked, some so savagely that they were hospitalized.
Almost none of the homicides has been solved.

Many Russians and non-Russians thought it was unlikely that anyone would kill investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. They believed her enemies would not risk the worldwide outcry that would follow her assassination. They were wrong.

Politkovskaya was gunned down in her apartment in Moscow in 2006 while working on a story about abductions and torture in Chechnya, where Russia has been fighting a brutal war against an Islamic insurgency.    

Politkovskaya’s death made her Russian journalist colleagues realize that no one was safe from having their voice snuffed out permanently.
Although the courts convicted five men in her case, many inside and outside Russia believe that they were scapegoats and that the real killers will never be caught.

Many of Russia’s neighbors have adopted their longtime mentor’s anti-human-rights policies, and press freedom is no exception.
Ukraine enjoyed more press freedom than any country in the former Soviet Union until Kremlin puppet Viktor Yanukovych became president in 2010.

His repression of the media was so swift and so intense that it was generating headlines outside Ukraine before the year 2010 was up.
Yanukovych had adopted Russia’s way of doing things, including squashing the press, the stories suggested.

Armenia is another country under Moscow’s thumb that has adopted its anti-press-freedom model.

Journalists here have been subjected to harassment, arrest and violence for years. The attackers have not shied away from high-profile journalists, either. Some of the targets have been prominent television newscasters.

The latest violence came in June 2014, when journalists were covering the release from jail of about 60 people who had demonstrated against the government’s plan to raise the price of natural gas.

Police used force to stop a television cameraman from taking film and another journalist from using her mobile phone to take photos.

No less an august body than the United Nations has called on all of the world’s countries to embrace press freedom because it fosters democracy.

That call has fallen on deaf ears in Russia.

Its press-freedom situation continues to be one of the world’s worst — and to be an unhealthy model for far too many of its neighbors.  
 
Sahakyan is a human rights activist based in Armenia.