Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza

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1 RUSSIA Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza Investigation by Alexandre Lévy October 2002 Reporters Without Borders - 5, rue Geoffroy-Marie, Paris Tel : Fax : europe@rsf.org - web :

2 Reports from the Penza region (south of Moscow, in the European part of Russia) suggested an unprecedented wave of violence against journalists in September: one was murdered, seven were assaulted, (five in the same newspaper) and one was abducted. These incidents were reported in the weekly digests published by the Moscow-based Glasnost Defence Foundation (GDF) and were the subject of a letter from Reporters Without Borders to Russian State Prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov on 27 September urging him to do everything possible to see that those responsible were found and tried. The gravity of these incidents, the lack of response by the authorities and the difficulty of obtaining additional information from Penza convinced GDF and Reporters Without Borders of the need for an on-site investigation. As a result, GDF president Alexey Simonov, Ruslan Gorevoi (the head of GDF s information service), Vladislav Bykov (a GDF jurist) and a Reporters Without Borders investigator conducted a series of interviews with news media representatives and officials in Penza from 14 to 17 October. At the end of the visit, they held a news conference that was attended by some 30 local journalists. Reporters Without Borders - RUSSIA - Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza - October

3 Background The Penza region is one of the Russian Federation s 89 oblast (regions, autonomous regions and republics). Like almost all of them, it is the scene of political confrontation between the mayor of its main city and its governor, in this case Mayor Alexander Kalashnikov of the city of Penza and Governor Vasili Bochkarev. The municipal and regional authorities dispute federal (and sometimes international) grants, as well as the proceeds from the privatisation of local state companies. They are monitored by the Kremlin s special representative, the federal inspector, a post created by President Vladimir Putin with the aim of reinforcing the central government s grip on Russia s vast territory. Unlike the mayor and governor, who are elected by universal suffrage, the inspector is directly appointed by the president and reports to him about events in his region. In Penza, the April legislative elections were won by the current governor, with the support of President Putin s Edinstvo party. He defeated the Communist Party candidate, Moscow Deputy Victor Ilyukhin, who was backed by a broad, local coalition that included supporters of the mayor, communists and liberals. It is now the custom in the Russian regions for election campaigns to be waged by means of news media in thrall to the different candidates which become formidable propaganda machines. They sing the praises of their candidate and publish compromising material ( kompromat ) of often dubious origin about their candidate s opponents. In Penza, as elsewhere, reporting suffers from a lack of objective news media and independent sources. Candidates are also able to buy the support of the local editions of the national news media. The distribution of media firepower has not changed since the last elections. The governor still controls the regional television channel and the daily Penzenskaya Pravda, where the editor in chief is his former press attaché. He is also implicitly supported by the regional edition of the big-circulation Moscow daily Moskovski Komsomolets. The mayor, for his part, controls the municipal newspaper Nasha Penza and Vechernaya Penza, and has the support of a small newspaper close to the communist party, Lyubimyi Gorod (My Favourite City). Reporters Without Borders - RUSSIA - Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza - October

4 Except for former journalist Alexander Kizlov, who seems to bounce around the Penza political stage like a free agent, all the victims in this wave of violence work for partisan publications. Accordingly, each of these publications views the violence against its own employees as flagrant violations of freedom of expression but dismisses the acts of violence against its rivals as fabrications or as attacks that had motives unrelated to journalism. Murder of Igor Salikov The most serious incident affecting the Penza news media has undoubtedly been the death of Igor Salikov, the head of security for the regional edition of Moskovski Komsomolets (called MK v Penze). Salikov was gunned down by two persons as he was getting out of a car with his wife outside his home near Penza on the evening of 19 September. Although the authorities opened an official murder investigation the next day, no arrests have been made. MK s editors claim that Salikov s murder was directly linked to its reporting. In a lengthy tribute to Salikov in the section produced by its team in Penza in MK s 26 September issue, Mikhail Eliseev, the head of investigative reporting in Penza, deplored the loss of a colleague... the person we had entrusted with our security and that of our families. The newspaper attacked all those including journalists with the mayor s news media who had accused it of trying to exploit Salikov s death for publicity purposes. The report left one with the impression that the city s mayor had to be behind the killing. The editors recalled that the newspaper had published a long investigative report in two parts in September entitled The thief s place is in prison, accusing the mayor of embezzling much of the city s allocation from the federal budget. According to the newspaper s editors in Penza, Salikov paid the price for this report in part because he had been the intermediary in obtaining the compromising documents on which the report was based. This view is in no way shared by representatives of the news media close to the mayor, who claim that Salikov was above all known for being a member of a powerful mafia group based in the neighbouring region of Saransk. They maintain that Salikov s role in MK v Penze was to protect the newspaper from extortion and racketeering by the local underworld, and that he was the victim of score-settling between rival gangs in the region. Many journalists, including former MK v Penze employees who have joined the opposition camp, subscribe to this view and rule out Reporters Without Borders - RUSSIA - Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza - October

5 any possibility of his having being killed because of what had been published in MK, a newspaper he didn t even read. This is also the view of Penza Deputy Prosecutor Teplov, who said Salikov s links with the criminal world were known to the police and judicial authorities. According to Salikov s wife, Salikov had learned shortly before his death that certain members of his mafia group had been murdered in Saransk and he had begun to fear for his own life. Bullet casings found at the scene of the murder matched those found after the Saransk murders. Salikov had even carried a handgun in the days preceding his death for his protection. Beating of Alexander Kizlov A former correspondent for the Moscow daily Izvestia and the founder of several regional opposition newspapers, Kizlov, 54, is nowadays viewed as a politician and public figure in the Penza region. Close to the news media of both the mayor and the communists, Kizlov also heads a civil movement call Rossia which has supported several unsuccessful candidates for governor. His sympathisers call him the adrenaline man while his detractors view him as a professional provocateur or a political weathercock. The victim of a violent attack outside his home on 25 September, Kizlov was still hospitalised when the Reporters Without Borders representative and the GDF investigators visited Penza. He was suffering from concussion and a broken leg, and had been given several stitches to his face. The authorities have opened an investigation into assault and battery but have made no arrests. Kizlov ruled out an possibility that the attack s motive was purely criminal. He said he was carrying a large sum of money and a mobile telephone, and was wearing a leather jacket, and yet none of these was touched. He said, they wanted to hurt me, punish me. Why? Kizlov thought the reasons were to be found in the conflict that has pitted him against Governor Bochkarev for the past several years and the support he gave to Bochkarev s opponent Ilyukhin in the last elections. His political friends such as the journalists with the pro-communist weekly Lyubimyi Gorod, have called it an attack against one of the leaders of the opposition to the governor, and point out the similarity with the attack on their own newspaper: in both cases the Reporters Without Borders - RUSSIA - Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza - October

6 assailants were two young, athletic men who use professional combat techniques and said nothing: no explanation, no warning or threats, just accurate, effective blows. The punitive raid against the premises of Lyubimyi Gorod Located in the basement of a building in the heart of the city, a few metres from Penza s pedestrian street, the offices of the weekly Lyubimyi Gorod were the target of what was unquestionably a punitive attack on the evening of 11 September. Two individuals burst in, looking for editor in chief Anton Sharonov. Beaten violently about the face, Sharonov, 23, lost consciousness. The assailants also hit five employees, including two young women who tried to telephone the police. Sharanov was rushed to hospital where he received several stitches to his face. The assailants were acting on orders, he said. They must have been given our address and my photo, together with instructions to give me a beating. The two assailants had previously come to the newspaper s offices asking for the editor in chief in the morning. Both close to the communist party and a supporter of Penza s mayor, Sharanov thought this attack was a warning or a punishment for a number of investigative reports published in his newspaper variously denouncing corruption in the governor s inner circle, or the region s sale of wheat at preferential prices to vodka manufacturing companies controlled by mafia groups. The news media close to the governor, especially MK v Penze, initially reported that Lyubimyi Gorod s journalists had fought among themselves. The same news media subsequently said they may have been beaten by the bodyguards of their former boss Ilyukhin, the unsuccessful candidate for governor. A preliminary enquiry was opened by the prosecutor s office in Penza in response to a complaint filed by Sharanov, and was subsequently closed in the absence of motive and suspects. After the GDF in Moscow raised the issue with the state prosecutor, the judicial authorities in Penza took another look at Sharanov s complaint and finally opened a criminal investigation. However, no suspect or witness has so far been questioned. The Shamayev and Frolov incidents Reporters Without Borders - RUSSIA - Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza - October

7 According to reports issued by GDF and Reporters Without Borders, Victor Shamayev, a journalist with the governor s newspaper Penzenskaya Pravda, was kidnapped in improbable circumstances by unidentified abductors on 14 September, subjected to lengthy mistreatment and then told to leave town before being released. This case, like that of Yuri Frolov, vice-president of the company that publishes MK v Penze, raises a number of questions that cast doubt on the supposed victims sincerity. Shamayev and Frolov both work for newspapers which do not hide their support for the governor and which immediately alerted their readers to these incidents, portraying them as acts of intimidation and revenge against the governor s news media. Those in charge of Penzenskaya Pravda and MK v Penze did not defend this position with much conviction when we spoke with them. Indeed, the complaint which Shamayev, a former police officer, had filed at the city s police station was withdrawn by Shamayev himself at the end of September. According to his wife, he had returned home the night after his abduction smelling strongly of vodka and had gone to bed immediately. His editor in chief, Evgeny Guseinov, stated to the police that Shamayev probably made up the entire abduction story in order to justify his absence from work after consuming too much alcohol. Guseinov confirmed that Shamayev had taken some leave in order to recover from these events. When the representatives of Reporters Without Borders and GDF met him on his return from vacation, Shamayev stuck to his original story, but was not convincing. GDF and Reporters Without Borders were not however able to meet Frolov, who was also on leave. MK v Penze editor in chief Maxim Ayuchatov, who had made such an issue out of Salikov s death, did not however seem to attach much importance to Frolov s misfortunes. Frolov had nonetheless told his colleagues that in early September he was never precise about the day two strangers had forced him into a car, driven him somewhere and tried to make him reveal the sources of the articles in MK v Penze accusing the mayor of embezzlement. Frolov had stood by this account when questioned by representatives of the prosecutor s office, but he had refused to make a complaint. Reporters Without Borders - RUSSIA - Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza - October

8 Official silence During their visit to Penza, GDF and Reporters Without Borders were able to see Mayor Kalashnikov, as well as one of the governor s deputies, Sergei Egorov, and the federal inspector, Vladimir Fomin. Until then, none of these institutions had in any way commented or taken a position on the September wave of violence against the news media. At their meetings with GDF and Reporters Without Borders, the mayor and the governor s representative each blamed the other side for this deterioration in security for journalists. The federal inspector stated that he had the situation under control but said nothing specific about what the police or judicial authorities or the FSB (the security service) were doing to put a stop to these abuses. The federal inspector is nonetheless supposed to coordinate their work and, if need be, alert their federal superiors if they are failing to do their duty. Following GDF s appeal to State Prosecutor Ustinov in Moscow, his office had immediately addressed a request to prosecutors in Penza for explanations about these various cases. Penza Assistant Prosecutor Teplov responded by detailing all the cases in a long letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reporters Without Borders. He said that all the cases were being handled by the rule book and undertook to adopt administrative sanctions in the one case in which his colleagues had failed in their duty, namely the Sharanov (Lyubimyi Gorod) case, in which they had failed to open a criminal investigation. He acknowledged however that so far no progress had been made in any of these cases. Conclusion Penza is an example of how local news media depend on government authorities in the Russian regions, whether municipal government (the mayor) or regional government (the governor). The representatives of the news media close to the mayor received Reporters Without Borders and Reporters Without Borders - RUSSIA - Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza - October

9 GDF in their vast premises within Penza s city hall. Those close to the governor have the biggest distribution network in the region, that of Penzenskaya Pravda. Certain of the journalists working there learned their trade as spokespersons or deputies to the governor. As for MK v Penze, the local of edition of the widely-read Moskovski Komsomolets, its editors appear to have changed political colours several times, moving between the mayor s camp and the governor s camp in response to subsidies that seem more like bribes. The wave of violence against the Penza press was real. The Lyubimyi Gorod case, in which five journalists were the victims of a reprisal attack right on the newspaper s premises, is the clearest evidence of this. But the lack of independent, non-partisan sources made it very hard to evaluate the other cases. Kizlov was clearly the victim of a violent attack, but it is hard to say if this was motivated by his former work as a journalist or his activity as a member of the political opposition to the governor. Salikov appears to have been the victim of a professionally-executed murder, but he was employed by a local newspaper in his capacity as member of the mafia underworld with the sole purpose of fending off the racketeering of his colleagues. Reporters Without Borders also has grounds for doubting the Frolov and Shamayev cases, which appear to have been fabricated to suggest a balance in the violence against the mayor s and governor s news media. At the press conference with local journalists, the GDF and Reporters Without Borders representatives undertook to follow the evolution of all these cases at the regional level and if necessary to again appeal to the Russian state prosecutor s office in an attempt to get to the bottom of things. Deploring the lack of news media objectivity and lack of solidarity between journalists in the different political camps, the two organisations also undertook to consider setting up a regional information network of which the purpose would above all be to report on press freedom violations Reporters Without Borders - RUSSIA - Regional news media suffer in battle for power : the example of Penza - October