The International Press Institute (IPI) today condemned a series of attacks and other provocations in recent days in Russia apparently intended to disrupt a seminar on investigative journalism.
Early this morning in the city of Yoshkar-Ola, approximately 800 kilometres east of Moscow, unknown individuals broke the ground story window of a private, two-story guest house where the trainers were staying and the seminar was to take place, and threw a dead rat through the window.
The incident followed an attack yesterday morning by a young man who threw a plastic jar of green paint on one of the trainers, former IPI Executive Board Chair Galina Sidorova, as well as a suspicious power outage in the building on Tuesday that occurred right as the seminar was to start.
Sidorova – who with journalist Grigory Pasko founded the Community of Investigative Journalists – Fond 19/29, which organised the seminar – said that the building was under video surveillance and that police had been notified. However, she expressed little hope that the assailants would face justice, pointing to a number of other recent instances in which police in Russia failed to make progress investigating attacks caught on tape and observed by multiple witnesses.
IPI Director of Advocacy and Communications Steven M. Ellis condemned the incidents and he reminded Russian authorities of their responsibility to apprehend the assailants.
“These incidents are just the latest in a series targeting the Community of Investigative Journalists – Fond 19/29 and seeking to prevent it from giving Russian journalists the tools they need to investigate issues of public interest,” he said. “Unfortunately, they illustrate both the prevailing attitude by government officials toward free expression and attempts to seek government accountability in Russia, as well as the rampant culture of impunity for attacks on journalists that prevails there.”
Commenting on the incident, Pasko, who is director of the Community of Investigative Journalists – Fond 19/29, wrote on his Facebook page: “Another investigative journalism seminar – this time in Yoshkar-Ola – is being threatened in an attempt to close it down.”
Sidorova told IPI this morning that she planned to continue the seminar, despite the recent incidents and the tremendous pressure that the organisation is under, part of what she described as a larger trend targeting independent media, civil society and the political opposition in Russia.
Community of Investigative Journalists – Fond 19/29 has faced a number of previous attempts to disrupt training seminars in Petrozavodsk, Nizhnevartovsk, Tomsk, Syktyvkar and Moscow, including threats against journalists as well as an anonymous bomb threat made by telephone.
In September, unknown men beat Pasko in the Siberian city of Barnaul, where he was conducting a similar seminar for local journalists, leaving him with a concussion.
