AGAIN ON RUSSIAN HUMAN RIGHTS AND CONTEXT
Posted: 08 Oct 2010 11:19 AM PDT
COMMENTARY
 by Gordon Hahn
In an October 5th Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, Robert Orttung, president of the Resource Security Institute, and Christopher Walker, director of studies at Freedom House, published the only kind of article on Russia politics allowed in the U.S. mainstream media print. It was yet another article on Russia's, albeit, less than sterling human rights record.  Specifically, the article rehashes the unsolved murders of Novaya gazeta journalists Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova and criticizes Russia authorities’ use of slander laws to silence critics like Oleg Orlov of the Russian human rights organization ‘Memorial’.  To be sure, these issues deserve some attention, but compared to what?
The issue was the unsolved murders of journalists and the authorities’ efforts to muzzle the media.  The focus of the three activists mentioned in the WSJ article – Politkovskaya, Estemirova, and Orlov – has been the violation of human rights in Chechnya.  But in Chechnya and the North Caucasus the main violator of human rights is not the federal or even local authorities.  
It is the underground jihadist insurgent terrorist network known as the Caucasus Emirate (CE) and its affiliates.  If we take the number of murdered journalists together with number of the killings and abductions of civilians in the North Caucasus since the end of the conventional war in Chechnya in 2002 that activists like Politkovskaya, Estemirova, and Orlov had been investigating, we find that the number of violations of human rights committed by the CE mujahedin far outnumbers those supposedly committed by the authorities.
In just the three years since the formation of the CE in late October 2007, the jihadists have carried out some 1,300 attacks, killed approximately two thousand civilians, civilian officials, and police, military, and security personnel, and wounded just as many.  While the Russian authorities have the conscience at least to deny any crimes for which they may have been responsioble, the Caucasus mujahedin do not; rather, they openly boast about and videotape them and promise more after each.
Yet neither the WSJ, nor the New York Times, nor the Washington Post have written even one article criticizing or detailing the CE, its record of violence, or its totalitarian jihadist ideology.  Instead, they have tried to foist an image that the jihadists are of the long lost Chechen national separatist independence movement defunct already for many years.  Moreover, many of the abductions and killings in Chechnya and the Caucasus are committed by local indigenous authorities and are the result of local traditions of criminality, violence, and "blood revenge” or honor killings.  Why are the suspected perpetrators or enablers of perhaps several hundred murders at most highlighted by hundreds of articles, but the CE jihadis, the killers of thousands and wounders of thousands more, are met with silence?
To be sure, the violations of human, civil, and political rights under Russia’s soft authoritarian regime are real, but what if we should compare Russia to other countries?  ROPV has already done a comparison of Russia with other countries that takes into account population (see Gordon M. Hahn, "Repression of Journalism in Russia in Comparative Perspective," Russia Other Points of View, 16 December 2009).
Whereas Russia has thousands of independent journalists and some independent media, countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and many others that the U.S. has sufficiently good relations with which the WSJ’s clientele does much business, have no independent journalists or independent media.
Whereas Russia has perhaps a handful of political prisoners, China has thousands.  For purposes of comparison I conducted a search on the Wall Street Journal’s website.  Eleven WSJ articles mentioned Estemirova since July16th, 2009 when her murder was reported.  Many more have mentioned Politkovskaya's murder, many implying that Putin was behind it.  When one searches "Chinese political prisoner” eleven articles for the thousands incarcerated appear for the same period.  But only four have anything to do with political prisoners in China.  A fifth is a short letter to the editor responding to a previous WSJ article.  Chinese activist Gao Zhisheng, who has been repeatedly subjected to detention, has been mentioned in fifteen WSJ articles during the same period.
Regarding China, we know it is the authorities who openly imprison political activists (and in prison kill them and harvest their organs).  In Russia’s case, there is doubt about the central authorities' culpability in, if not their responsibility for, the 17 unsolved murders of journalists killed since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.  Several of these were the victims of criminal groups, and some were the victims of local officials or their allies in regions far away from Moscow. 
So the question for the Wall Street Journal’s editors and those of even more aggressively one-sided critics of Russia at the Washington Post and New York Times is:  Why does the coverage of a handful of journalists killed in Russia equal that of thousands of oppressed and killed Chinese activists and lawyers?
On muzzling the media and the "truth", the article fails to mention Russia’s uncensored internet (compared to the censored webs in China, Saudi Arabia, etc.) and quasi-independent newspapers (nonexistent among our friendly authoritarians).  The article does mention the radio station Ekho Moskvy "which offers an alternative spectrum of opinions to three million Russians (out of 140 million) works under constant threat of closure, since its new owners are close to Mr. Putin.”  This is a more modest statement of the facts than should be permitted to pass by. 
Ekho Moskvy station is owned by the state-owned natural gas and oil company ‘GazProm’, and it regularly features the leaders of the democratic and non-democratic opposition, including the Wall Street Journal’s own editorial member Gary Kasparov.  Why would Putin and the Kremlin resort to killing journalists who were writing what has been said on a radio station that it funds?
If the U.S. mainstream media published more balanced articles that pursued Russia's complexity, they would provoke a more informed and fruitful discussion of Russia’s still unsatisfactory political order.  Unfortunately, the U.S. mainstream media seem almost as determined as the Kremlin to stifle alternative views.
Dr. Gordon M. Hahn – Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California; and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002) and Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), which was named an outstanding title of 2007 by Choice magazine.  He has authored hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and other publications on Russian, Eurasian and international politics and publishes the Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Eurasia Report (IIPER) at http://www.miis.edu/academics/faculty/ghahn/report.
ARTICLE IN QUESTION:
Wall Street Journal
October 5, 2010
Truth in the Time of Putinism
Kremlin critics fear assassination and kangaroo courts.
By ROBERT ORTTUNG AND CHRISTOPHER WALKER
Mr. Orttung is president of the Resource Security Institute. Mr.  Walker is director of studies at Freedom House.
Four years ago this week, the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered execution-style in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. The truth is an increasingly scarce commodity in Vladimir Putin's Russia, and Politkovskaya's murder showed that for those courageous enough to pursue it, the consequences can be deadly.
That lesson has been reinforced many times, including in the 2009 murder of Natalia Estemirova, an activist who had worked with Politkovskaya to document human rights abuses in Chechnya and other restive Russian regions. (In 2007, Estemirova was the first recipient of an award named in Politkovskaya's honor.)
Now the Russian authorities' campaign to silence critics has extended to Oleg Orlov, the leader of the human rights group, Memorial, for which Estemirova worked. Mr. Orlov faces serious criminal slander charges and three years imprisonment if convicted for implicating Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov in Estemirova's murder. While Mr. Kadyrov claims he had no ties to the killing, Mr. Orlov has said that he bears direct responsibility as the head of the republic. For that statement Mr. Orlov has already paid damages in civil court.
These intertwined cases are emblematic of Putin's Russia, in which Kremlin leaders and their allies have developed brutally effective methods for keeping consequential information from public view.
Controlling television is integral to the Kremlin's strategy. The three main television outlets Channel One, Rossiya and NTV coordinate their coverage with the Kremlin and omit what is deemed politically undesirable. Thus most people receive news that "bears little relationship to the reality in  Russia and the world," Mr. Orlov told us.
Russian authorities have the power to make certain individuals invisible to national television audiences. In place of opposition figures, activists and social critics, public-affairs shows feature a reliable cast of government-approved pundits.
Some activists such as opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a Soviet-era dissident who still protests for human rights are known to a degree because they rose to prominence before the Putin era began in 2000. But after years of being denied the oxygen of TV time, these internationally known figures now hold little sway with the Russian public. Meanwhile, younger activists have been unable to gain stature because they simply don't have access to the most widely watched shows.
Kremlin leaders focus on television because that's where most Russians get their news. But they have also chilled the relatively freer media of newspapers and radio.
Once highly regarded newspapers, such as Kommersant, have lost much of their bite since being bought by Kremlin-friendly magnates. And while Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper for which Politkovskaya worked, still conducts investigations into sensitive topics like elites' abuses of power, it has faced crippling libel charges, and its website has been subject to denial-of-service attacks. Meanwhile, the radio station Ekho Moskvy which offers an alternative spectrum of opinions to three million Russians (out of 140 million)¬works under constant threat of closure, since its new owners are close to Mr. Putin.
While Kremlin censorship is generally effective, there are some reasons to hope its effects may weaken. Increasing numbers of economically active Russians aged 30-50 no longer see watching TV as a profitable exercise. And while Russians have typically used the Internet for entertainment and social networking, small but growing audiences are turning to online media for alternative political news and analysis.
Kremlin control of the media is particularly relevant now, as parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for December 2011 and March 2012, respectively. Mr. Putin reportedly wants to return to the presidency again, having served since 2008 as prime minister.
If history is a guide, the pre-election period will see even tighter control of information. The authorities have already ramped up the pressure on the country's most critical civic organizations, simultaneously raiding 40 of them last month, purportedly to investigate their compliance with laws regarding financial disclosure.
For his part, Mr. Orlov continues to confront  Russia 's court system, with his next appearance scheduled for Oct. 14. And he's having a predictably hard time marshalling support for his cause.
Mr. Orlov's case is not isolated but represents how the Kremlin silences dissent. It deserves the attention of the  U.S. government and governments in  Europe , which should call for fair and open proceedings. Because the Kremlin operates by keeping observers in the dark, it's the job of the West to shine light on cases like Mr. Orlov's.