The International Press Institute (IPI) is concerned about the situation of the Permsky Obozrevatel independent business weekly newspaper, based in the city of Perm, which has reportedly suffered repeated harassment in recent months. According to information before IPI, on 2 August, more than 20 armed men wearing camouflage uniforms and masks stormed the office of the newspaper.

Based on a report by the Glasnost Defence Foundation (GDF), the men showed FSB (Federal Security Service) ID cards and said the search was being conducted under Article 283 of the Penal Code concerning the disclosure of state secrets. They did not specify what kind of secret information the journalists had allegedly disclosed.

As a result of the search, computers, electronic equipment, memory cards, diskettes, accounting records, and employees’ documents were among the property confiscated by the authorities. A similar search by the authorities led to the confiscation of computer equipment on 25 May 2006.

The acting editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Tatyana Sokolova, said that the newspaper has been under pressure since 2005. Distributors and printing houses have been told not to work with the paper, and in March 2006, local police withdrew part of the print run of a special edition of Permsky Obozrevatel from circulation.

More recently, in mid-August, the weekly, which was being printed at a private printing house in the city of Kirov because all the printing houses in the Perm region had refused to print it, discovered that the printing house will no longer do so. Reportedly, a representative of the local governor had warned the printing house not to print Permsky Obozrevatel. Sokolova believes the harassment and intimidation are connected with the paper’s work, as the newspaper has published articles critical of the local authorities. She also did not rule out the possibility that the raid may be connected with upcoming elections to the regional parliament.

According to GDF’s information, Permsky Obozrevatel is not the only newspaper to face raids by the local authorities. In November 2002, the offices of the newspaper Zvezda were searched, and in 2003, two reporters from the paper, Konstantin Sterledev and Konstantin Bakharev, were involved in a drawn-out investigation process, tried by the Perm regional court for disclosure of state secrets and finally acquitted because there was no evidence. The acquittal was later upheld by the Supreme Court.

Commenting on the situation, IPI Director Johann Fritz said, “IPI is concerned about the situation surrounding the paper. IPI believes that attacks on journalists and media outlets are gross violations of everyone’s right to ‘seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’ as guaranteed by Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, attacks on independent media outlets lead to increased self-censorship and a decline in freedom of expression.”