From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 8/7/2005 1:02 AM

Russia targets media after failure in Chechnya

Embarrassed by its failure to head off rebels in Chechnya, Moscow has reacted by publicly barring a major US television station, ABC, from working in Russia, after the broadcast of an interview with Chechen leader Shamil Basaev. Domestically, the move warns journalists against crossing the line in reporting on Chechnya, and diplomatically, it escalates growing anti-US sentiments in the political establishment.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on 2 August that it would not extend accreditation to personnel working in Russia for the US television channel, ABC, after the broadcaster’s decision to air a lengthy interview with Chechen warlord Shamil Basaev on its “Nightline” show on 28 July. It was the time in post-Soviet Russia that the government has publicly barred a media organization from working in the country.

Speaking to ISN Security Watch, a Foreign Ministry official said the ministry believed that ABC had violated a 1976 UN pact when it aired the interview with Basaev. The official, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue, said ABC had violated Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which bans propaganda for war.

In the interview, Basaev who had claimed responsibility for major attacks in Russia - including hostage-taking raids on a Beslan school last year, a Moscow theater in 2002, and a maternity hospital in Budyonnovsk in 1995 - accused the Russians of being terrorists and promised more attacks in Russian cities.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was the first official who demanded that ABC be punished, saying last Sunday that he had barred military personnel from speaking with the network.

ABC defended its broadcast, saying all positions in the Chechen conflict should have an opportunity to speak out.

The US State Department expressed regrets on Wednesday over the Russian Foreign Ministry’s decision, but said it could not influence the editorial policies of the media.

Accreditations for ABC’s 4 Moscow-based professional staffers are set to expire between November this year and February next year.

Journalists, including Russian nationals, employed by foreign media organizations cannot work legally in Russia without accreditation.

A reminder of failure

Basaev’s appearance on US television enraged Russian officials, especially the military and security officials in the Kremlin “siloviki” (elite), because he is a living reminder of their failure to deliver on their promises to “waste terrorists in the outhouse”, Boris Timoshenko, a media analyst with the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a Moscow-based media freedom watchdog, told ISN Security Watch, referring to a famous quote from President Vladimir Putin’s early days in office.

The big problem with the ABC report was that it gave a voice to Basaev, who has a US million bounty on his head but continues to elude federal forces, Mark Franchetti, a journalist for Britain’s The Sunday Times told ISN Security Watch.

Franchetti has reported extensively from Chechnya and was the only journalist allowed into Moscow’s Dubrovka theater during the 2002 crisis to interview the attackers’ leader.

Basaev has claimed responsibility for the attack, which ended with 129 hostages dead.

“They [the Kremlin] viewed this broadcast as a provocation, as giving a tribune to terrorists,” Franchetti said.

While most earlier by the Russian authorities to extend accreditation to foreign media outlets were done quietly, the ABC decision is a warning to foreign and Russian journalists to curb their professional zeal when writing about Chechnya and terrorism, Boris Makarenko, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies, told ISN.

“It is clearly a demonstrative action,” he said.

Recalling that the authorities have issued several warnings to the Russian Kommersant newspaper for publishing interviews with Chechen rebel leaders over the past several years, Makarenko said they were forced to some extent to react harshly to ABC to prevent Russian media from being able to accuse them of double standards.

While reporting about abuses committed by the Russian army and the pro-Moscow puppet government in Chechnya often irritates the Kremlin, giving voice to Chechen rebel leaders is what puts media in real jeopardy.

Chechnya off limits

At the beginning of the second war in Chechnya in 1999, the Kremlin worked out elaborate rules - disguised as security measures - for journalists visiting Chechnya, attempting to diminish the amount of unfavorable reporting from the volatile republic.

Although the military phase of the conflict has passed, the restrictions on journalists remain - one of which is working without accreditation from both the Foreign and Interior Ministries.

This week, the Foreign Ministry said Andrei Babitsky, a journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was working illegally when he interviewed Basaev in Chechnya in June.

An official said Babitsky was required by law to obtain accreditation from both the Foreign Ministry and the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for areas that are designated as zones of counterterrorism operations.

Babitsky, who said he obtained the interview on his own time, offered it to ABC, which broadcast it despite Russian objections.

The last time the Foreign Ministry denied accreditation to a foreign journalist was in early 2000, when Frank Hoefling, a German reporter with N24 television, “falsified news reports from Chechnya”, ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov told ISN Security Watch on Wednesday.

Authorities accused Hoefling of stealing graphic photographs and a film depicting dead bodies in Chechnya that had been taken by Russian journalists and presenting them on N24 as evidence of the brutality of federal troops against Chechen civilians.

The ministry official said several foreign journalists had been denied accreditation or not had their accreditation extended in recent years, but refused to elaborate.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, a media freedom watchdog, said the latest case was on 6 July 2003, when the ministry denied accreditation to Agence France Presse journalist Ali Astamirov. Astamirov, who had applied for accreditation the previous December, was abducted in Ingushetia on the same day that his accreditation was denied. He has not been seen since.

Speaking to ISN Security Watch by phone from New York, CPJ representative Alex Lupis called the case “an example where denial of accreditation was used to ensure that a journalist remained legally vulnerable to harassment by government officials”.

Several foreign reporters interviewed for this report acknowledged that they had traveled to Chechnya without obtaining Interior Ministry accreditation, which would have immediately restricted their movements to officially approved routes and limited the independence of their reporting.

By doing this, reporters put themselves at risk of losing their Foreign Ministry accreditation and permission to continue working in Russia.

Apart of stripping foreign journalists of their accreditations, the Foreign Ministry can simply stop issuing visas to critical reporters.

Petra Prochazkova, a Czech journalist who reported extensively from both sides during the first conflict in Chechnya, was denied a visa in 2001.

Vibeke Sperling, a correspondent for the Danish newspaper Politiken, said she was denied a visa last year because of her reporting about Chechnya and other sensitive issues.

A diplomatic low with the US

The broadcast of the controversial interview took place at the moment when US-Russian relations reached the coldest point in the post-Cold War era.

The dislike has become obvious since the Beslan tragedy last September, when Putin, without calling names, publicly accused those who “wish to tear away a fatter piece” from Russia and those “who help them, believing that Russia, as a large nuclear-armed power, is still a threat”.

Later, Putin’s remarks on the public protests in Ukraine, which ended the regime of Leonid Kuchma and saw Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko rise to power, shed light on who Russia’s ruling elite views as a threat to its existence.

Putin then spoke against those who tell others how to live and, in case of disobedience, punish them “with the help of the truncheon made of missiles and bombs, as it was in Yugoslavia”.

In the meantime, US officials over the past few months have escalated their criticism of Moscow for cracking down on freedom of speech and on Yukos oil giant, who owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky had been actively involved in opposition politics. Rights abuses in Chechnya and Russia’s poor democracy record have started to return to the agenda of the US policymakers after years of tolerance following Russia’s joining the global “war on terror” in 2001.

The July summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), in which Russia and China effectively lobbied to remove US air bases in Central Asia, marked another level in the escalation of anti-American sentiments among the group’s member states, including Russia.

The broadcast of the interview with Basaev, which had been postponed for over a month after its filming, occurred at a point when neither Russia nor the US is afraid of losing anything.

Dmitry Orlov, an analyst with the Agency for Political and Economic Communications, told ISN that Russian authorities were overreacting in an attempt to show the Russian public, first of all, how strong Russia can be in its dealings with the US.

In his interview with ABC, Basaev said nothing new that could have further embarrassed the Russian authorities or threatened Russia’s security. But the mere fact of the broadcast and the reaction to it has demonstrated the strength of the Russian government’s contempt of media freedom, and it has also helped to highlight what could very well develop into a second “cold war”.

Nabi Abdullaev, ISN, Security Watch’s senior correspondent in Russia

Opinions contained in the Commentaries and Analysis section of ISN Security Watch do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the ISN


2005-08-07 02:45:54

http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2005/08/07/3973.shtml