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posted by zaina19 on March, 2007 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 3/11/2007 3:53 PM HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH The pen put to the sword By Allison Gill, Director of the Russia office of Human Rights Watch, published in The Guardian March 7, 2007 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. If evidence of foul play comes to light, Safronov will be the 14th journalist killed in Russia simply for doing his job since 2000, the year Vladimir Putin was elected as president. 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 ... >> full
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Who's to Blame for Russia?
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posted by zaina19 on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 3/12/2007 1:09 AM Who's to Blame for Russia? By Fred Hiatt Monday, March 12, 2007; A13 Who lost Russia? As the world's biggest country backslides ever more quickly into authoritarianism, the answer you hear increasingly is: the United States. Curiously, you hear it both from Russians, who simultaneously deny that anything bad has happened and blame America for it; and from Americans, who assume that a few tweaks of policy could have made everything come out differently in Moscow. One version blames America for backing Boris Yeltsin, who presided imperfectly over Russian democracy in the 1990s and so, the story goes, soured Russians on the very idea of freedom. Another blames America for allowing former Soviet satellites to join NATO, hurting Russians' feelings and promoting a nationalist backlash. As readings of history, these theories mix elements of truth with great dollops of illogic. It's true that Russians endured trying times after communism crumbled. Prices rose, promised pensions vanished and unsavory characters became millionaires. But the same was ... >> full
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Press freedom: To understand these outrages, you need a Russian history lesson
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posted by zaina19 on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
rom: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 3/12/2007 1:17 AM Press freedom: To understand these outrages, you need a Russian history lesson As another Moscow journalist dies a violent death, Oleg Panfilov traces a pattern that long predates the rule of Vladimir Putin Published: 12 March 2007 As Russian prosecutors continued last week to investigate how Ivan Safronov, the respected defence correspondent of Kommersant newspaper, was found dead in the snow having apparently fallen from his high-rise apartment, it was another Moscow paper that made an apposite observation. "For some reason, it is those journalists who are disliked by the authorities who die in this country," noted the popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets. Safronov, 51, had repeatedly embarrassed the Russian government with his stories about its nuclear programme, and his newspaper colleagues have angrily rejected the suggestion that he took his own life. "Of course he did not go of his own accord," wrote his deputy chief editor, Ilya Bulavinov. The scepticism is hardly surprising, given the history of violent attacks on media professionals ... >> full
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Sarah Baxter, Washington and Anna Voutsen, Moscow
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posted by zaina19 on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 3/12/2007 3:20 AM From The Sunday Times March 11, 2007 Killings may leave Putin a hounded man Sarah Baxter, Washington and Anna Voutsen, Moscow FOR one Russian journalist, a recent spate of murders and poisonings has become terrifyingly personal. Maria Ivanova is fleeing home this week for a new life abroad after being promised political asylum in America. The award-winning journalist, an expert on the Caucasus region, had grown used to being followed and harassed, even beaten up on one occasion. But events took a sinister turn last October when an intruder broke into her flat while she was away. She changed the locks, had a cup of coffee and went to bed. “I woke up in terrible pain early in the morning,” she said. “There was practically no skin left on my mouth, only bare flesh. The same thing happened to my fingers. My skin just started peeling off.” Her body swelled and she was rushed to hospital, where kidney failure was diagnosed. A month later ... >> full
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A convenient suicide in Russia
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posted by zaina19 on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
rom: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 3/12/2007 1:30 AM The Boston Globe GLOBE EDITORIAL A convenient suicide in Russia March 12, 2007 IF THERE were no precedents for the suspicious death of Russian journalist Ivan Safronov, it might be easier to believe his fall from a fifth-floor window March 2 was the suicide officials initially said it was. But too many other journalists working on sensitive stories have met violent ends in Russia. Safronov, military correspondent for the daily Kommersant, had told colleagues he was about to file a story on Russian sales of advanced missiles and fighter jets to Syria and Iran, transactions that were to be routed through Belarus to give the Kremlin deniability. These weapons deals raise grave questions about the geopolitical role the government of President Vladimir Putin wants to play. Whether the Kremlin is selling Syria sophisticated Iskander missiles with a range of 175 miles to revive old Cold War alignments in the Mideast, or whether the motive is merely to confer enormous profits on members ... >> full
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